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The Journal of
Historical Review
m
m
A. R. Wesserle
The New World
Disorder
Charles Lutton
PearJ Harbor;
Fifty Years of Controversy
— Reviews —
The Holocaust on Trial: The Case of Ernst Zuendel
Stalin's Apologist, Walter Duranty:
The New York Times's Man in Moscow
—Document—
Mercy for Japs: Letters from Yank
— Historical News and Comment—
An Interview with Admiral Kimmel
Holocaust Education: Cui Bono?
Roosevelt's Secret Pre-War Plan to Bomb Japan
m.
VOLUME ELEVEN, NUMBER FOUR WINTER 1991-1992
The Journal of
Historical Review
VOLUME ELEVEN, NUMBER 4/WINTER 1991-1992
Editor: Theodore J. O'Keefe
Associate Editor: Mark Weber
EDITORIAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE
GEORGE ASHLEY, Ph.D.
VERNE E. FUERST, Ph.D.
Los Angeles Unified School District (Ret.)
Hartford, Connecticut
ENRIQUE AYNAT, LL.B.
SAMUEL EDWARD KONKIN III
Torreblanca, Spain
New Libertarian
T nncr Rpar*h f^plifnrnis
PHILLIP BARKER, Ph.D.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
R. CLARENCE LANG, Ph.D., B.D.
Seguin, Texas
JOHN BENNETT, LL.B.
Australian Civil Liberties Union
MARTIN A. LARSON, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Phoenix, Arizona
FRIEDRICH P. BERG, B.Sc.
WILLIAM B. LINDSEY, Ph.D.
The Historical Review Committee
Research Chemist
Ft. Lee, New Jersey
JAMES J. MARTIN, Ph.D.
ALEXANDER V. BERKIS, LL.M., Ph.D.
Ralph Myles Publishers
Longwood College (Ret.)
Colorado Springs, Colorado
WALTER BEVERAGGI-ALLENDE, Ph.D.
University of Buenos Aires
CARLO MATTOGNO
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Italy
ARTHUR R. BUTZ, Ph.D.
REVILO P. OLIVER, Ph.D.
Northwestern University
University of Illinois (Ret.)
Evanston, Illinois
Urbana, Illinois
BOYD CATHEY, Ph.D.
HENRI ROQUES, Ph.D
The Southern Partisan
Colombes, France
ROBERT H. COUNTESS, Ph.D.
WILHELM STAGLICH, Dr. Jur.
Hunts ville, Alabama
Badenweiler, West Germany
ALBERT J. ECKSTEIN, Ph.D.
Private Research Consultant
UDO WALENDY, Diplo. Pol.
Verlag fur Volkstum und
ROBERT FAURISSON, Ph.D.
Zeitgeschichtsforschung
University of Lyon-2
Vlotho/Weser, West Germany
Lyon, France
ANDREAS R. WESSERLE, Ph.D.
GEORG FRANZ-WILLING, Ph.D.
Marquette University (Ret.)
Uberlingen, West Germany
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The Journal of Historical Review is published quarterly by the Institute for
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Table of Contents
Volume Eleven, No. 4 Winter, 1991-1992
Articles
The New World Disorder 389
A.jR. WesserJe
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy 431
Charles Lutton
Book Reviews
Robert Lenski, The Holocaust on Trial: 469
The Case of Ernst Zundel
Mark Weber
S.J.Taylor, Stalin's Apologist, Walter Duranty: 479
The New York Times's Man in Moscow
Jack Wikoff
Document
Mercy for Japs: Letters from Yank 491
Historical News and Comment
An Interview with Admiral Kimmel 495
Holocaust Education: Cui Bono? 500
Roosevelt's Secret Pre-War Plan to Bomb Japan 503
About the Contributors 511
From the Editor
This issue of The Journal of Historical Review, the forty-
fourth, completes Volume Eleven. Its two feature articles, Dr.
Andreas Wesserle's passionate critique of George Bush's "New
World Disorder" and Dr. Charles Lutton's survey of half-a-
century's study (and evasion) of the facts beyond the
December 7, 1941 "Day of Infamy," signal an advance and a
return, namely to a Revisionism that looks beyond what
French nationalist and populist Jean Marie Le Pen properly
styled "a point of detail," i.e. the gas chambers and the
Holocaust
Not that we're abandoning our critique of the lie of the
Holocaust— the non-existent Hitler order to exterminate the
Jews, the fraud of "the six million," and what Louis-Ferdinand
Celine called "the magical gas chambers"- not at all. Just that,
with the Holocaust Lobby in full flight, as IHR associate
Bradley Smith places advertisement after unanswered
Holocaust-debunking advertisement in the newspapers of
America's leading universities (if it be agreed that throwing a
grand mal epileptic fit and shrieking for more censorship is no
answer); as two American presidential candidates (Pat
Buchanan and David Duke) are dogged for their alleged
Holocaust Revisionism by those journalists and politicos who
hearken most carefully to Their Masters' Voice; and as the
conmen and crooks who promote and profit from the twen-
tieth century's emblematic hoax thrash and drown in the life-
giving ocean of historical truth (those that aren't dead before
they hit the water, that is), we Revisionists, with The Journal of
Historical Review in the van, resume the assault begun by
Harry Elmer Barnes and associates, on the key, and not yet
properly answered, historical questions of the war and peace
in this century.
Dr. Wesserle's essay will surely generate controversy among
Journal readers— its social-democratic, Middle-European, anti-
imperialist viewpoint will stimulate and challenge Revi-
sionists, just as it would enrage the bar-stool patriots and
coffee-house cosmopolitans who sanction and support the
media-consecrated, White-House-directed America-Last coali-
tion.
Dr. Lutton has expertly and fluently reviewed, and if we
may say, revived the Pearl Harbor debate, by reminding us of
the solid Revisionist scholarship that skewered FDR's known
(continued on page 430)
The New World Disorder
A.R. WESSERLE
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every
rocket /ired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those
who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not
clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It
is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its
scientists, the hopes of its children.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Farewell Address
As a bolt of lightning that flashes across the darkening sky
is witness both to the approaching storm and to the
unbearable tension which is giving birth to it, so the fires of
the Gulf War have thrown a lurid light on the menacing return
of a critical imbalance in world politics, and on the deep-
rooted malaise— political, economical and social— in today's
America. As to the actor who holds the international and the
domestic halves of our globe together, President Bush's
concern for image rather than reality has been little
diminished.
Despite his inaugural pledge in 1989 of a "kinder, gentler"
nation, the only "thousand points of light" the president has set
ablaze are the civilian and military targets that his air force
and navy, and those of his client states, destroyed with a
ferocity unequalled since the Second World War. George
Bush's words— that it was not our goal to "destroy the nation of
Iraq" -have been drowned out by his deeds: the total,
unremitting warfare of the colossus among today's "military-
industrial complexes" against a small, Third World country,
and his unabated efforts to erase that country by stoking the
flames of its civil war. Iraq has been "bombed back to the stone
age." Following the war, it is expected to assume the
staggering costs and reparations of a total war it did not even
have the capacity to start.
390
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
The Gulf War has been "neo-colonial," or two-faced. Shorn
of its "high-tech" twenty-first-century trappings, it is embar-
rassingly reminiscent of the imperial extermination expedi-
tions of yesteryear, such as that conducted— with the aid of
native askari— by Lord Kitchener against Abd Allah's Sudan in
1898. Revealingly, the war has also moved in the time-
hallowed tradition of political Crusades, in particular those of
the Puritan-Calvinist type, redolent of Manifest Destiny. Here,
the American executive's efforts at mobilizing the entire
civilian population for permanent war (by enlisting one and all
in the propaganda levge en masse of the "Homefront") was at
least as important as the military offensive abroad. Bush's
1991 State of the Union pledge of "a hundred years of peace"
thus should be understood as simply another facet of his "psy-
war" operations. What a desperate way of preparing his peo-
ple for the sacrifices ahead!
In fine, the disregard for diplomatic compromise and the
single-minded concentration on offensive ways and
means— against militarily inferior countries— which have
characterized the Reagan and Bush administrations have
made probable, also, that the twentieth century will end even
more bloodily than it began: with colonial wars (and wars over
colonies) escalating into continental conflicts and, if allowed
to rage on, with eruptions into world-wide conflagration,
domestic and international.
The global auspices are plain. In the gathering storms be-
tween the three major economic blocs: the Americas, ruled by
the Dollar; the Indo-Pacific rimlands, dominated by the Yen
(an area once known as the Dai To-A Kyo-e-ken, or the "Great
East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere"); and Europe assembled
under the leaking umbrella of the Deutsche Mark, America's
Establishment, goaded by an ever-worsening domestic crisis,
has now let it be known that it will stop at nothing to assure its
hegemony in a "New World Order" by exploiting the destruc-
tive capacity of its military and propaganda apparatus to the
hilt. Thus, to paraphrase America's first wholeheartedly Im-
perial President, Teddy Roosevelt, "We'll speak loudly and
carry a big stick."
The former Soviet Union, on the other hand, will play the
role of a Global Gadfly, possibly as a reaction to the conditions
of economic, social and political near-anarchy into which she
has plunged herself in 1991-92. After the unsuccessful coup by
The New World Disorder
391
the Kremlin reactionaries (in which President Gorbachev
played a murky part), Russian and the surrounding republics
seem to be undergoing a replay of the March 1917 revolution.
As then, the leaders and frontmen make up a volatile mix of
the ancien regime (Gorbachev), the "social revolutionaries"
(Yeltsin) and various Manchester Liberals who have just
rediscovered Adam Smith. Will Yeltsin prove to be the new
Kerensky destined to lead Russia into an even more radical
upheaval, to be climaxed either by a remade proletarian
Maoism or a return to Great Russian nationalism backed by
the Pamydt ("Remembrance, Tradition") or related
movements? Whatever the outcome, we will not have to wait
long. The end result will also depend on the state of politics
and economics in America.
Some Western observers, particularly in Poland, may wish
for Russia's total dissolution. Perhaps they pine for the days of
that other Boris and the False Dimitrij of the Time of Troubles
at the end of the Rurilcid dynasty in the early 1600's. But so
negative a course of action would be unwise.
Yes, the subject nations from the Baltic and the Ukraine to
the borders of China must be, and are being, accorded in-
dependence and sovereignty. But, for economic reasons and
as a countervailing force against an overly dominant China,
we should seek to support a multicentric, yet externally
strong, Eurasian Confederation to take Russia's place. Could
anyone doubt the fact— even before Secretary of State Baker's
official visit to Beijing in mid-November, 1991— that a strong
and stable Chinese State will reclaim, by diplomacy or force,
those millions of square miles of territory lost to Russia during
the nineteenth century and before? It bides its time, awaiting
these conditions: a) chaos in Russia sufficient to render a
Chinese invasion likely of success— if diplomatic initiatives
fail; b) United States overextension abroad coupled to eco-
nomic-social upheaval at home; c) the nonviolent union of
Mainland China with Taiwan and Hongkong. The world
stands on the threshhold of the stage of history when those
conditions will be fulfilled.
Violence will continue to tear the social fabric of the state of
east-central Europe, as ethnic and economic warfare spreads
and balloons. Those cobbled together artificially by the 1919
Dictate of Versailles will suffer most. Marriages of force and
convenience between disparate nations, growing out of a
mosaic of minorities, they were re-established by frightful
392
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
violence at the end of the Second World War. Now, in 1991-92
and for years to come, in so-called Yugoslavia ("South Slavia")
the ancient nations of Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Islamic
Bosnia, the Turks, the Albanians and Hungarians will battle to
overthrow the armies of overbearing Serbs; in Romania,
millions of the underprivileged, the Hungarians, Bulgarians,
Transylvania Germans, Greeks, Armenians, et al, will strug-
gle for their freedom; in Czecho-Slovakia, the sad repository
of a history of violence and brutality exercised by the ruling
Czech minority against a majority of Germans, Slovaks,
Hungarians and Ukrainians, the Slovaks and their neighbors,
the Moravians, are striving desperately for national self-
determination.
No doubt, these and other violent struggles for freedom
might give an adventurous Russia more than one opportunity
for interference, as of old. No doubt, also, the great nations of
Central Europe might profitably join forces in a Rhine-Elbe-
Danube Federation, as they did for 1,006 years prior to 1806.
In the Near East and in South Asia, the war against Iraq
may, far from defeating aggression, have given a final push to
the area's seething cauldron of interstate and internecine
violence. From the Atlantic to the Aegean, and from the Jor-
dan to the Indus, especially at the junction of the borders of
Pakistan, Kashmir, India and China, the world must brace
itself for ever escalating rounds of mass conflict. Nor has the
Muslim world, from Mauretania to Indonesia to Washington,
D.C., yet spoken its final word.
How on earth have we blundered into this mess? More im-
portant, how can we get out of it?
The tentative answers to these questions will keep us busy
for the remainder of this paper, examining the power-political,
military, historical and the moral-oeconomic dimensions.
There can be no simple answer. But there can be an orienta-
tion: an overall view that sees the traditionalist, or partly tradi-
tionalist, majority of the societies of the earth trying desperate-
ly to survive, salvaging their most precious values, while
caught in the ever tighter grip of global industry and trade, of
global politics and of "modernizing" ideologies. To that end
they are adopting the most powerful features of the so-called
model, developed, society: arms, industry and, above all, en-
forced social-political cohesion. Failure to do so means loss of
national independence, social and economic chaos, techno-
The New World Disorder
393
logized and unlimited mass murder carried out against the
weak by the strong, and, for those mis6rables who manage to
survive physically, the most thorough, the most dehumanizing
enslavement devised during the last 5,500 years of human
history— totalitarianism at last.
A caveat: it can also happen to us. Perhaps it already has.
A key word is "weakness." In the case at hand, both Iraq and
the USA are weak, though in different ways. Saddam Hussein
and his "Arab-Socialist" Ba'ath regime, all claims to the con-
trary, were in 1990 still exhausted by the eight-year war with
Iran, despite carefully selective military aid from the United
States, France, the Soviet Union and China. Indeed, it was this
weakness, together with strong historic claims, that prodded
the Iraqi leadership to take increasingly active steps against
oil-rich Kuwait, with official encouragement from the U.S.
More fundamentally, the Ba'athists had inherited an Iraq com-
prising disparate ethnic and religious communities, weighed
down by poverty and inequality, riddled with illiteracy and
saddled with a high rate of population growth (features most
of which fit America to a T!). Caught in a classic situation of
underdevelopment, the Ba'athists, who came to power follow-
ing the 1958 Kassemite revolution, decided to modernize Iraq
through social-economic reform carried out by an author-
itarian regime— measures sure to keep them busy, and militari-
ly and economically inferior relative to their rival Saudi
Arabia and their enemy Israel, for decades to come.
In contrast to an Iraq that has been faced with the stark
choice of modernization or death, the United States, under
Presidents Reagan and Bush, has seemed intent on turning its
back on even the modest social reforms enacted and institu-
tionalized during the five decades preceding 1981, in its pro-
fessed program for allegedly "recapturing" the simpler values
of a nineteenth century dominated by laissez-faire capitalism
and classical liberalism.
In reality, however, the United States is a classical case of a
society suffering from Over-cum-Underdevelopment: the
Establishment's increasing readiness to fight undeclared wars
and its uncompromising commitment to world-wide trade
and development have split twentieth-century America into
two camps. An ever-wider societal gulf gapes between the Up-
per Cliques on one hand, and the shrinking middle and
burgeoning lower class on the other. The old song grows true:
"The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." The former,
394
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
internationally engaged, are free to secure and expand their
financial and economic domination at home, and exploit it by
political superiority abroad. The middle and lowers, harried
by rampaging living costs, by chronic under- and unemploy-
ment, menaced in their very lives by crime rates gone wildly
out of control, and descending precipately from social anx-
ieties to concrete, often self-alienating, fears, have all but given
up on participating in, much less exercising control over, the
political processes, save in one respect: that of mouthing for-
mulas handed them from "above" and supplied by the elec-
tronic and print media, a consumer product designated in
Orwell's 1984: "prolefeed."
In the Reagan-Bush years we have seen, if anything, a rigid
reinforcement, an ossification, of the already huge and rigidly
bureaucratized, military-corporate behemoth. Does this pic-
ture of congealing social stratification, galloping impoverish-
ment and the accelerated growth of a super-powerful oligar-
chy bring to mind Imperial Rome in the third and fourth cen-
turies A.D.? To be sure, there are obvious differences in style.
But is the nominally free citizen of today better off— as a
"morally autonomous" human being— than his ancestors, the
serfs glebae adscripti of the older, greater, empire?
It is only fitting that the government of a plutocracy be head-
ed by— to expropriate a felicitous phrase of 1928 — a "Cabinet
of Billionaires" and businessmen, led by Bush, Quayle, Baker
and Brady and ably represented in Russia by the Texas
Trickster, Robert Strauss. One main reason for the appoint-
ment of this oil and gas wheeler-dealer, a former national
chairman of the Democratic Party, to the post of United States
ambassador in today's Russia is the leeway this affords him
and his coterie for plundering the natural riches of that giant
country.
Questions: Will Yeltsin and his advisors prove strong
enough to resist the economic-political-military blackmail ex-
erted by the Bush-Baker-Bobby Strauss White House? Will to-
day's Mother Russia prove strong enough to turn her vast
natural resources to diplomatic advantage? Or will the coming
instabilities of the world economy— when the outcry will be:
"Save himself who can!"— plunge Russian-American relations
to new lows?
Now traditional sentiment has it that such enterprisers
act— or should act— with grave circumspection, reckoning
risks, overhead and rational chances for profit, and perhaps
The New World Disorder
395
even reflecting on an indeterminate entity known to previous
centuries as "the common weal" (perish the thought!) bereft of
rancor.
Bunk. A look at some of the motives that precipitated Presi-
dent Bush into the carnage of war against Iraq will teach the
unbiased observer the facts of Life (that is: Death).
Some Specific Reasons for America's War With Iraq
1. Foreign adventurism; to distract the attention of the
American people away from the crises at home and mobilize it
against a Foreign Devil.
2. An alarming drop in Bush's popularity ratings before
August 1990, with dire consequences for '92: the feelings
against him might have been summarized by the phrase: "All
show, no go."
3. A stimulus to the slumping U.S. economy.
4. The intimate ties of Bush and Secretary of State James
Baker to the oil industry in Texas and the Near East.
5. Their alliance with reactionary cliques in Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Bahrein and the other Gulf sheikdoms. These had
grown increasingly alarmed at the success of Saddam Hus-
sein's internal reforms, which reflected badly on the reac-
tionaries' lack of political and social reform (particularly glar-
ing with regard to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian,
Egyptian, Persian, Pakistani, etc. "guest workers" and
businessmen living in those states).
6. The golden opportunity to establish hegemony over the
Gulf area, and all of southwest Asia, from the Bosporus to the
Indus, for decades to come, meaning the elimination of a
nucleus for future Near Eastern independence as, indeed,
former nuclei for native resurgence, viz., Mossadegh's move-
ment in Iran and later the Khomeini regime, were overthrown
or hamstrung through American interference.
7. After Bush's decision to destroy Saddam Hussein was
made on or before the first days of August 1990, support for
the parallel designs of our client state of Israel; today, this
means support also for the expansionist aims of the Zionists:
hegemony over the Near East from the Persian Gulf to the
mouth of the Nile ("His kingdom will reach from sea to sea,
from the Euphrates to the ends of the earth. The people of the
desert will bow down before him . . ." Psalms 72, 8-9).
8. The panic, now nearly forgotten, produced in the White
House by the success of Gorbachev's foreign policy initiatives
in western Europe; additionally, the worry over the liberation
396
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
of central Europe from the Elbe to the Bug Rivers, once
reliably occupied by the Soviets, and, conversely, the elation
over the disorder in the USSR. An Imperial Imperative was
perceived: push open the "window of opportunity" and seize
world rule!
Camouflage it all for the other nations (except the Russian)
by passing it off as a con-dominium; call it the New World
Order.
The plan worked brilliantly in 1990-91, chiefly because the
then Soviet Union was too preoccupied with its own crises at
home to run successful interference for Iraq. Reluctant, often
financially strapped countries, such as the states of South
America, the African members of the United Nations Security
Council, as well as Egypt, Syria, Turkey, not to mention Israel
and the USSR, were pushed and enticed over to our side, too,
by showering them with promises of hundreds of billions of
dollars, collectively, in aid and "debt forgiveness."
Erratic policy, indeed, for a nearly bankrupt U.S. Govern-
ment, whose citizens are expected to assume ever more
crushing burdens in support of an ever smaller, ever more
miserable slice of the pie, while shouldering the world-
imperial predilections of the American Power Elite.
"Quo usque tandem, Catilina . . .?" How much longer will this
mix of domestic shrinkage and international aggrandizement
stay glued together?
No one knows. Mindful of the considerations advanced
above, and drawing useful nudges from the fields of history,
politics, military affairs and the human oeconomy, we shall be
able to arrive at a few suggestions.
Pacta Sunt Servanda, or: A Political History of Iraq
Iraqi claims against all or part of Kuwait (the islands of War-
ba and Bubiyan), anger at Kuwaiti slant drilling in the
Rumailah oil field, and the very genesis and survival of the
modern state of Iraq itself are part and parcel of the often
violent processes of nation-building, of modernization, which
is the legacy of the twentieth century for the peoples of Latin
America, of much of Europe, of Africa and Asia. Iraq has
often been the victim of both centrifugal and centripetal
tendencies produced and exacerbated by a) its heterogeneous
society, made up, among other groups, of the Indo-European-
speaking Kurds and the ethnic Turks, both Sunni Muslim, in
the north; the Muslim Arabs, many of them Shi'ite, of the
The New World Disorder
397
south; and the closely-knit Nestorian, Chaldaean, and Arme-
nian Christian communities; b) successive waves of con-
querors. The majority "Arab" culture of Iraq has undergone
contradictory swings of frustration, reaction and accommoda-
tion vis-a-vis these tendencies.
From the beginning of recorded time, for over five thousand
years, the land now known as Iraq and the sheikdom termed
Kuwait have shared a common destiny. Taken together they
form the central and southern portions of ancient
Mesopotamia, which measure about 630 miles or 1000 km
north-south, the "land between the rivers" of the Tigris,
Euphrates and their confluence, the Shatt-al-Arab. Iraq, which
means approximately "the roots, the rooted one," can vie for
honors as the cradle of culture, politics and civilization, and
Kuwait has been one of the border marches guarding its flanks
against incursions from Arabia Deserta. The area has been
marked and marred by vast contrasts: of climate, of untold
wealth and grinding poverty, of ruler and ruled, and it lies
athwart some of the most productive, and the most violently
contested, routes for communication and trade on earth.
Before the First World War, when most of the Near East was
under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire, southern
Mesopotamia, including Kuwait, had been for centuries ad-
ministered through the vilayet (government district) of Basra,
the largest city in southern Iraq. During the course of that war
Turkish rule was supplanted by British imperialism. Then, in
1919 and 1920, in the so-called peace settlements of Paris,
Sevres and San Remo, Britain carved up the entire, huge,
Pivot of Empire stretching from the Nile and the Bosporous to
the Khyber Pass and the Gulf of Oman, following secret
treaties concluded between His Majesty's Government,
France and Tsarist Russia (the latter was eliminated from the
spoils-sharing in 1917). These agreements, the most brilliant of
which was the package known collectively as the Sykes-Picot
treaties of 1915-1916, ran directly counter to other pacts the
British concluded, such as the Balfour Declaration of 1917,
which created a "national homeland for the Jews" in Palestine,
and, even more glaringly, the understandings reached with
the administrator of the Muslim Holy Lands, Sherif Hussein
of Mecca, who was persuaded to rebel against Ottoman rule
(Lawrence of Arabia!) by prospects of a united Arabia extend-
ing from the Red Sea to the upper reaches of the Tigris River.
(Sherif Hussein is the ancestor of both King Hussein of Jordan
398
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
and the late King Faisal II of Iraq, who was killed during the
anti-British revolution led by General Abdul Karim el-Kassem
in 1958.)
Britain grabbed the lion's share for itself. After plans for slic-
ing up Mesopotamia were shelved in 1920 (due to its post-war
role as a counter-balance to French influence in Syria,
Lebanon and Turkey, as a barrier against the spread of suc-
cessful nationalism beyond the boundaries of Turkey and
Iran, and, not least, to the rich oil deposits of northern
Mesopotamia), most of it was constituted as "Iraq," a British
dependency nominally presided over by King Faisal I, a son of
the Sherif Hussein of Mecca. It was camouflaged as a "Class A
Mandate" granted to the United Kingdom by the League of Na-
tions. Be it noted that the native Arabs demanded full in-
dependence from the very start, as reported by the American
King-Crane commission sent to the Near East by President
Wilson, and that they were not fooled by the British
maneuvers for an instant.
It is unfortunate indeed that another U.S. president— in
violent contravention of President Wilson's insistence on the
right to popular self-determination— saw fit, in 1990-91, to
maneuver the United Nations, successor organization to the
League, into being pulled along in the wake of his attempts to
crush or to dismember Iraq. "Might makes right," but, too,
"Violence begets violence," and we may, at best, expect the
subterfuges of 1991 to worsen disorder in the Middle East and
around the world.
During the period between the First and Second World
Wars, the British were able to combine an apparent sympathy
with insistent Arab and Iraqi strivings for independence with
a ready reliance on armed might, including many sorties
flown against civilian populations by the Royal Air Force.
British "advisors" managed the tribal sheikdoms along the
Gulf, including Kuwait. The ceremonial adoption of such
documents as the Organic Law of 1924 (the constitution), the
1930 treaty with the United Kingdom (which provided for a
twenty-five-year "alliance" between Iraq and Britain, and—
sure enough— was succeded by the U.S.-led Baghdad Pact of
1955) and the 1932 admission of Iraq to the League of Nations
did not alter the underlying realities. The relationship lasted
through a series of internal Iraqi power struggles (the leaders
of the various factions usually being well-subsidized by the
British) until April 1941, when Rashid Ali al-Gailani estab-
The New World Disorder
399
lished a pro-German government, which was promptly
crushed by Britain..
The politicians who dominated Iraqi society until the 1958
putsch -and the British rule which was enacted through
them— were characterized by these features: a) "gradualist"
approach toward emancipation from colonialism; b) a conser-
vative attitude— to put it mildly -toward social, economic, or
political reform; c) the formation of an "Arab Federation"
which comprised Iraq and Jordan; d) alienation from modern-
ist Arab thought, then dominated by the Cairo of Gamal
Abdel Nasser; e) widespread corruption; f) repressive rule.
General Nuri es-Said was the period's most representative
politician. Without trying to claim too much in favor of the
1958 overthrow of that ancien regime, or in favor of the
"nationalist-modernizing" governments which have come to
power since then (many through coups d'etat), a very clear-cut
choice has emerged for the majority of Iraqis: between a cor-
rupt, repressive, colonial regime or one which is strong, na-
tionalist, reformist, comparatively clean and, usually, dic-
tatorial.
A third choice might be noted, one favored by such in-
terested outsiders as Israel, Turkey, the United States and,
formerly, the USSR (each for its own reasons): national
weakness, civil war, chaos and dismemberment.
If America truly is in favor of regional and world stability,
an "Order" in which collective burdens (underdevelopment)
and assets (human and natural resources) may be to an extent
shared, then the first choice — colonialism — and the
third— dismemberment— are precluded.
"Stupidity Is a Diplomat's
Only Unpardonable Crime" (Talleyrand) or,
Nuclear Gunboat Diplomacy in the Global Village
In the twentieth century, perversely enough, the most
powerful nation-states seem to have turned von Clausewitz's
dictum that "war is the continuation of politics by other
means" upside down. Certainly Uncle Sam's international
behavior seems to vary according to a Law of Inverse Propor-
tion: the more "total" the military means applied, the less in-
terest in negotiation through diplomacy. A second relation-
ship determines the totality of means: the weaker a U.S. presi-
dent perceives himself in terms of the economy and domestic
politics, the more inclined is he to opt for war. This latter
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formula appears to apply to the Second World War (and to the
First, with modifications), to the Korean and Indochina In-
cidents and to our Gulf War. As psychic distances in the
realms of economics and politics shrink (the Global Village),
and as America's financial and domestic situation becomes in-
creasingly precarious, our leaders move us and the rest of the
world further down the road to total belligerency. In style, Un-
cle Sam likely will favor the Iraqi model, or the "expanded-
gunboat-diplomacy-in-Latin America" model, namely, in-
tervention proceeding in stages of increasing violence: from
embargo to blockade to all-out force in three easy steps, after
which a country or a region of several countries can be reduc-
ed to international impotence, domestic strife and chaos, and
thus easy manageability by Washington and Wall Street. This
three-step pattern of intervention has been, in whole or in
part, evidenced already during the Reagan and Bush ad-
ministrations, which have targeted a succession of countries
and regimes, whether "leftist" or "rightist," that dared defy
Washington's wishes: Nicaragua, South Africa, Grenada,
Libya, Panama, the Philippines, and lately Iraq. Whatever
their systems of government, these and other countries will be
described as "democratic" if they accede to the wishes of
America's imperial-minded power elite, "tyrannical" or an "ag-
gressor" if they refuse.
A Caveat
In terms of unrestricted power politics it might be "logical"
for us to engage in ever more ruthless applications of our ABC
(atomic-bacteriological-chemical) and our PR (public relations)
capabilities. Soon, however, the crying need for reforming our
domestic and international relations might lead us to wiser
choices: the models of ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, ancient
China, which, learning from their mistakes, elected prudently
to conserve their strength and abstain from a policy of perma-
nent expansion to the lasting benefit of mankind, and of
themselves.
Professor Abbas Hamdani, of the history department of the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has analyzed the
diplomatic steps taken with regard to the problem of Kuwait,
before and after August 1990, in careful detail. But it is this
paper's task to document the very absence of the stuff of
diplomacy that has characterized recent U.S. efforts in the
field (and to suggest ways toward improvement): to show the
The New World Disorder
401
lack of intellectual substance and the erosion of moral integri-
ty, the failure to achieve comprehensive vision, the decay of
discipline.
Who can trust a government, at home or abroad, that at-
tempts to straddle the powder keg of the Middle East while
lighting the fuse of war?
The main stages of George Bush's descent into sham
diplomacy have been roughly as follows: 1. His active in-
volvement, as vice president of the Reagan years, in the mess
of the Iran-Contra affair, a series of deeply corrupt transac-
tions which involved secret arms sales during the Iraq-Iran
War to Iran through Israel and, in the western hemisphere, il-
legal arms shipments to the rebels in Nicaragua. Many details
are still densely shrouded in secrecy, but Congressional in-
vestigators learned that Vice President Bush made secret, of-
ficial journeys to Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama. The
climax to these seamy maneuvers, which ultimately benefited
only the Zionists' deals, came with the dispatch of a bible per-
sonally signed by President Ronald Reagan to the Ayatollah
Khomeini. 2. In the course of the December, 1989, invasion of
the sovereign state of Panama by President Bush, the flagrant
breach of international law and comity which occurred when
U.S. troops stormed the extraterritorial premises of the em-
bassies of Peru and Nicaragua, and threatened to do the same
to the Vatican embassy. 3. The instructive exercises— either
in duplicity or in deep ignorance— that took place when the
United States ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, informed
President Saddam Hussein that the U.S. viewed relations
between Iraq and Kuwait as a purely "intra-Arab" affair, in July
1990, and when the official spokesmen for the U.S. Govern-
ment, Kelly and Tutwiler, openly and repeatedly declared that
the United States had no "security arrangements" with or
security concerns for Kuwait. In light of the fact that Iraq
never has recognized the independence of Kuwait, that it tried
to incorporate Kuwait in 1961 and 1973, and that, in July
1990, there were obvious signs that Iraq was getting ready to
occupy it, such official pronouncements must now be viewed
as giving the "green light," or at least the "amber light," for ac-
tion to President Hussein. 4. George Bush's bloodcurdling
rhetoric in the course of fall and winter 1990-1991, of inflict-
ing death and destruction on Iraq, his carrot-and-stick method
of "persuading" the permanent and non-permanent members
of the United Nations Security Council to issue Resolution
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THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
No. 660, and the twelve resolutions which followed, calling
for the "immediate and unconditional" withdrawal of Iraq
from Kuwait and for the unconditional return of "sovereignty"
to Kuwait, and his giving the "cold shoulder" to attempts by a
long series of interested parties— ranging from repeated tries
by the Soviet Union; the European Community; the foreign
ministers and governments of Italy, Germany, France; the
chairman of the Socialist International and former German
Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt; to the governments of
Algeria, Iran, Pakistan and even U.N. Secretary-General Javier
Perez y Cuellar— to bring the Gulf dispute to a speedy end, as
well as to convene a Mideast peace conference for solving the
area's crises comprehensively. 5. Disregard for the apparent
willingness of the Iraqi government to cooperate with peace
efforts short of "unconditional surrender," such as the release
of hostages; Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz's conference at
Geneva with Secretary of State Baker; Aziz's proposal, again,
of convening a comprehensive Mideast conference; and
Aziz's flights to Moscow to appeal for Soviet mediation prior
to the start of the violent phase of the land war. 6. President
Bush's insistence on issuing unconditional ultimata followed
by the application of raw force. Perhaps most serious of all, 7.
President Bush's ignoring, passing over in silence, of the com-
prehensive peace plan that his own Secretary of State, James
Baker III, had worked out with Soviet Foreign Minister
Bessmertnykh, which was to have been included in Bush's
State of the Union Address to the assembled houses of Con-
gress, but was not. Apparently the timely intervention of the
government of Israel, alarmed at the prospect of having to
reach a just solution to the Palestinian question, sufficed to put
a comprehensive treatment of the entire Middle East crisis on
hold.
Lest a further discrepancy not be forgotten either: George
Bush endeavored stringently to enforce Security Council
Resolution No. 660 within weeks of the provocation, and at
the cost of probably hundreds of thousands of lives, military
and civilian, all allegedly for the independence of the small
sheikdom of Kuwait. But he and his predecessors have done
very little to enforce U.N. Resolution No. 242 of November
22, 1967. Significantly, this document emphasizes the "inad-
missibility" of territorial conquest by war, shows the need for a
just and lasting peace in the area, and calls for the "just settle-
ment of the refugee problem."
The New World Disorder
403
This extraordinary concoction of confusion, ignorance,
groundless fears, hunger for unrestrained power and instant
readiness to exercise unlimited violence is no way to pacify a
region and a globe already suffering from a surfeit of force.
To be sure, Secretary of State Baker's "exploratory" trips to
the Middle East and his meeting with a handful of Palestinian
leaders deserve recognition. But these initiatives will remain
charades aimed at television audiences unless the root prob-
lems of expansionism, lack of national self-determination and
vast inequities in the distribution of power and wealth are ad-
dressed and corrected. This holds true especially after the ex-
ploratory Madrid conference of October 1991.
Finally, George Bush far exceeded the bounds of action
authorized by the United Nations resolutions, even if they did
specify— under U.S. pressure— that ". . . all necessary means"
be used to clear Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The invasion and
occupation of southern Iraq by the United States, the en-
couragement of rebellion in the north and the south (if not an
absolutely direct involvement in it), and open talk by
American officials of establishing a lasting American presence
and a "peace-keeping nerve center" in the Gulf region all point
to Bush's aggressive regional and global intentions.
Arguably, Bush, following in the footsteps of such imperious
predecessors as Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and
Franklin Roosevelt, has not merely honored the non-
interference principle of the Monroe Doctrine chiefly in the
breach, but has stood it on its head, replacing the defunct
European colonial empires with a single, neo-colonial, world
power as chief global interventionist: the United States of
America.
Even the most determined "psy-warrior" can bend legal in-
structions only so far without rupturing them. In the form of
the UN Charter they prescribe:
Article 33,1: The parties . . . shall . . . seek a solution by negotia-
tion, inquiry, mediation, conciliation, judicial settlement, resort
to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means
of their own choice. 2: The Security Council shall, when it
deems necessary, call upon the parties to settle their disputes by
such means. [Author's emphasis]
This is normative language. The use of peaceful means is
not optional but mandatory. In short, George Bush has done
violence to, not just the territories, the embassies and the
peoples of sovereign nations, he has fractured international
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THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
comity and law, and he has acted in open contempt of those
and other allegedly sacred texts which ought to govern rela-
tions between nations.
Permanent War and the Military
"QuoiJ tu veux qu'on t'^pargne et n'as rien dpargnd!"
(What! You expect to be spared yet you have spared no one!)
— Corneille, Octave
There'll be no doubt that it's started. It will be massive. It'll be
violent. It'll be fast It'll he everything you ever wanted in a war
and never got. ^ _ 0 _ . p
—General Norman Schwarzkopf
Do ends, no matter how sublime they are assumed to be,
justify the employment of any means in the course of war? No,
they do not, not if the commander-in-chief and his generals in-
tend to conduct "civilized" warfare as codified, in the twen-
tieth century, by the Hague rules and the Geneva conventions
concerning warfare and the roles of combatants and non-
combatants in war. Alas, it seems safe to say that, in the war
against Iraq, the commanders had no such intention and that
those rules were honored chiefly in the breach.
To judge by the reportage of the Pentagonized U.S. "news"
media, all American and allied warriors, from the top down,
threw themselves into the fight with gleeful abandon. Con-
fronted by a numerically and technologically far inferior foe,
they happily indulged in an orgy of organized mass killing and
destruction. (On Saturday, February 23, 1991 -the official
start of the land war-801,030 U.S. and allied troops faced
545,000 Iraqi soldiers, most of them draftees. At the start of
the air campaign, NBC-Television reported that Saddam Hus-
sein had merely 70 aircraft capable of night operations; ap-
parently most of them absconded to Iran, leaving thousands of
U.S. and allied war planes, from F-16's to B-52's, to fly hun-
dreds of sorties per day.)
Pilots' references to a "turkey shoot," to "Daytona Beach on a
spring break" abounded, while independent journalists
somberly described the route of retreat out of Kuwait of the
Iraqi divisions as "apocalyptic devastation." Northern Kuwait
and southern Iraq were a "killing ground" on which Iraqi
soldiers, seemingly confused by contradictory orders and ex-
posed to murderous air attacks, were cut down by the tens,
possibly the hundreds, of thousands. Accurate numbers are
unavailable.
The New World Disorder
405
The civilian population of Iraq fared little better. In pursuit
of a policy of total war and unconditional surrender reminis-
cent of Franklin Roosevelt's endeavors during the Second
World War and Winston Churchill and Dr. Lindemann's pre-
occupation with annihilating Germany by means of a strategic
bombing offensive carried out by 10,000 heavy bombers, a
technologically advanced space, missile, air and battleship
campaign against an underdeveloped country of eighteen
million (half of whom are under the age of sixteen) has wiped
out Iraq's infra- and superstructure, to wit: schools, Moslem
mosques and Christian churches— some of the oldest and
greatest on earth— power plants, telephone exchanges, water
and sewage facilities, bridges and mass transit, radio and
television, as well as most other organized means of survival.
By March 1991, with no running water, sewage treatment,
or electricity— even for hospitals— big cities like Baghdad,
(with four million people), Basra, Mosul, and Kirkuk faced
widespread starvation and epidemic diseases such as cholera,
with possibly hundreds of thousands, or millions, of civilian
victims.
The sanctions (i.e., the total blockade) which the United Na-
tions, under U.S. and British pressure, still enforces against
Iraq, despite the ceasefire, have had to be relaxed somewhat to
permit the shipment of a slight amount of medicine into the
country.
As for "surgical precision" airstrikes: in Tikrit alone, a small
city of about 25,000 in northern Iraq, half of the population
was reportedly killed when the town was leveled by bombing.
Did Tikrit suffer because it was Saddam Hussein's hometown?
There can be no doubt that, by the start of the air offensive
in early 1991, the restrictive language of U.N. Security Coun-
cil resolution No. 660 had been replaced, at least temporarily,
by much more far-sweeping objectives: 1. the removal of Sad-
dam Hussein from office and from life; 2. the elimination of
Iraq as any kind of economic or military factor in the Middle
East; and therefore, 3. the occupation of a "security zone" in
southern Iraq by the allies, cutting off the port of Basra from
access to the sea; 4. the literal annihilation of Iraq's armed
forces as an effective whole, thus depriving her of any defense
against her neighbors, adjacent or more removed; and 5.
United Nations sanctions to keep her weak and divided for
years or decades, or ripe for dismemberment when the time
comes.
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A special factor needs to be mentioned, too: that of the
negative "image" of the 'typical Arab" created by the controlled
U.S. "news" media. Particularly in times of seeming emergen-
cy, he is depicted as a vicious "terrorist," an exact reversal of
reality, for most of the manifold states and groups of the Arab
world have been victims, victims repeatedly of expansionism,
imperialism, mass murder and mass terrorism. It goes without
saying that the "news" media and their captive audiences ex-
tend the same type of sterotypic scapegoating to all Muslims,
whether Arab, Pakistani, Indian, or American. One of the
many revealing cases reported during the public hysteria of
the Gulf War involved a driver of an airport bus at Chicago's
O'Hare Field, who refused to pick up an Algerian
businessman because he "looked Arabic." The F.B.I, was even
busier than usual investigating Arab-Americans (recall that
several years ago a number of resident aliens in Los Angeles
were targeted for deportation— because they subscribed to a
pro-P.L.O. periodical).
The many revealing facets of military performance and pro-
paganda in the Gulf War can scarcely be done justice to within
these pages. Even the war's purely tactical questions are dif-
ficult to assess, as all sides concerned have censored the news,
not least the Pentagon. Still, from the limited evidence it ap-
pears that the Iraqi forces were totally outclassed, not only by
American superiority in space, in the air and at sea— despite
Hussein's handful of obsolescent, restricted-range, Scud
missiles— but even on land, where the majority of abandoned
tanks seemed to be 35-year-old Soviet T-55s and 25-year-old
T-62s. A legacy of carefully selective Soviet arms shipments,
weakness dating from the brutal Iran-Iraq war, or both? At
any rate, President Saddam Hussein was a military strawman
whom the Pentagon, well knowing beforehand, could savage
with impunity.
By all indications, Saddam, his Western media image as a
Foreign and Alien Devil to the contrary, was waging a strictly
limited campaign with a limited objective, in the main by
political means: the incorporation of Kuwait or, failing that, a
phased retreat under face-saving but legitimate conditions,
such as convening a conference to solve the Mideast's pro-
blems, with the proviso of liberating the Palestinians from
Israeli oppression.
In fact, both Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney and General
Schwarzkopf have agreed that, in the early days of August
The New World Disorder
407
1990, the Iraqi armed forces could have-and, by implication,
should have— captured the Saudi supply bases located along
the Persian Gulf a few hundred miles south of Kuwait, such as
Dhahran, Djubail, Ras Tannura and the island sheikdom of
Bahrain itself, into which U.S. supplies were pouring at a
feverish pace. In those days, the Iraqis could have done so
even with their antiquated equipment, since American and
allied forces were few. But they abstained.
This restraint was not reciprocated by Iraq's enemies. The
Americans, the British (and their gulf protectorates), and their
allies bided their time until they had amassed an overwhelm-
ing numerical and technical superiority, then launched— not a
limited Blitzkrieg with a few hundred tactical aircraft— but a
paralyzing, total war of extermination against Saddam Hus-
sein, his administration (the army and the civil service), the
nation-state of Iraq (or its viability as such) and, by extension,
against self-determination anywhere in the Middle East. Aside
from the quasi-political, final aim of unconditional surrender,
politics or traditional diplomacy did not enter into the pic-
ture—again, a very Rooseveltian total, but ultimately self-
defeating, pseudo-solution.
Doubtless strategists everywhere have drawn the obvious
conclusions:
1. Forget about conventional diplomacy except for the pur-
poses of blinding your own people to your real goals and fool-
ing the adversary whom you have selected as your next victim
on the road to internationalist rule ("we have global respon-
sibilities"); 2. prepare the field for total war by total global pro-
paganda: be sure to "satanize" your adversary; 3. when the
time is ripe, having achieved surprise, destroy your foe-of-the-
moment's country or region by massive media-and-military
firepower, sparing nothing and no one; 4. if there is the ghost
of a chance of determined resistance, pulverize that chance
ahead of time, and if need be, the entire civilian infra- and
superstructure with it.
The spirit and the logical, realistic development of the
lessons drawn from the war against Iraq lead directly to the
possibility of a third world war against nations far more com-
petitive with perceived U.S. interests than is Iraq. The smart
bombs, the missiles and the laser deathrays of Gulf fame have
concluded the post-war years (as, following today's fashion, we
look longingly back to World War II) and have, at last, ushered
in the pre-war years leading up to the final global war, with
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their attendant domestic as well as global ramification.
To add two more points to the Four-Point Program outlined
above: 5. the destruction of rationality in Washington
itself— which lately has not distinguished itself by reason or
responsibility; 6. the total subversion of our political
economy.
The Moral Oeconomy
'We have met the enemy and he is us. " _ p ogo
Today, in a limited but technologizing world, in which a
scarcity of human resources (i.e. "heart," "mind," "brains,"
"guts") is chasing a rapidly proliferating shopping list of "goals"
created by the analytical intellect driven by the will to absolute
power, it is the first duty of public morality to intervene active-
ly in the resulting "chaos," in the economy of forces, in order to
preserve and enhance the value priorities of the human con-
stitution and of the natural ecology.
The first human value to be preserved is freedom, the
capacity to choose rationally amongst a near infinity of goods
and bads. I write this despite the excesses of "license" indulged
in during such events as the French Revolution of 1789. In a
society ruled by the military-industrial complex freedom is the
first value to go. There, it is also the most important human
property, for only freedom can power us out of such a
society's culs-de-sac: megalomania, totalitarianism, internal
and external war, and the type of ossification described in
Oswald Spengler's Der Untergang des Abendlandes.
Freedom has its domestic, group and individual (as it has its
national, popular and international) dimensions. All are inter-
related and intertwined. Today, as never before in history, all
of our freedoms are in danger of being swept off the face of the
earth by the technologized garrison state with its universal
pretensions (perhaps disguised as a U.N. "New World Order").
Short of awaiting a natural cataclysm (such as the one that
wiped out the dinosaurs) we should take heart and act accor-
ding to the following insights:
"GemeinwoW geht vor Eigennutz" ("The common good takes
precedence over private gain"). This maxim, coined, though
not invented, by the great organizer of rural cooperatives,
Raiffeisen, if correctly understood as a good through the prin-
ciple of subsidiarity, flies directly in the face of the accepted
gospel truth of present-day plutocracy: the allegedly greatest
The New World Disorder
409
good for the greatest number through unrestrained, individual
competition (society "red in tooth and claw"). The rather
peculiar sort of Social Darwinism as practiced by America
and in America today has but one result: the brutalization of
domestic and international society (whether behind a facade
of "Yuppie" conspicuous consumption and "United Nations"
resolutions, or not). Raiffeisen's thought provides a timely an-
tidote.
Too, "government of the people, by the people, for the people"
should not perish from the earth, but can and should be
revived.
As never before in the past, in the twentieth century the
lords of mass "communications" have twisted and subverted
the truth in the service of easy commercial and political
manageability. We know, on the contrary, that he who shouts
"Stop, thief!" the loudest actually is the thief, that those who ac-
cuse others of "shocking" misdeeds have in truth themselves
perpetrated the most heinous crimes in history, physically,
psychologically, morally. They are the killers of the human
spirit, the murderers of freedom. They are the Enslaver. Day
by day they seek to rule absolutely, through cliche and
stereotype.
In brief, public morality as well as the more limited social,
political and financial deeds of a commonwealth should form
a Greater, a Moral Oeconomy. It might be defined, according
to Webster, as the
. . . husbanding, the "careful management of wealth, resources
(of a . . . community or government); avoidance of waste by
careful planning and use ..." [Webster's New World Dictionary,
Second College Edition, 1986).
Has the U.S. government since 1981 excelled in any sense of
this definition? Has it understood the basic human need for a
Moral Oeconomy?
Not likely.
Indeed, the former CIA chief and U.S. Secretary of Defense,
James Schlesinger, has characterized "Reagonomics" as "the
fiscally most irresponsible policy in history"— an apt hyperbole
for most endeavors, domestic or international, of the Reagan
and Bush years.
We might profitably recall some of the "highlights," as the
catastrophic impact of Reaganomics on the American people
and on the world will be felt for decades to come.
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I. "Conventional" corruption— In terms of the hundreds of
billions of dollars directly or covertly misappropriated and
swindled from the American people— not to mention the
thousands of billions stolen from the public on Wall Street and
from coast to coast by dint of encouragement and rotten exam-
ple from On High— the Reagan regime has left other presiden-
tial contenders for the crown of public corruption, such as
Warren Harding (Teapot Dome Scandal) or U.S. Grant's ad-
ministration (during the era of the Robber Barons), wallowing
in the dust. The Iran-Contra affairs, the HUD scandal and
similar deeds will figure prominently in the annals of
decadence, from Byzantium to Babylon. Both political parties
leapt into the muck. Of the "Keating Five"-the five United
States senators involved in the murky deals of the Arizona
savings and loan executive— the one singled out for public
blame by his colleagues was California's Senator Alan
Cranston, a former Democratic presidential contender.
II. Structural and attitudinal faults— A policy of "planned
obsolescence" was applied to campaign promises from the
start. Reagan and Bush administrations that had pledged to ex-
tirpate the national deficit raised it instead to undreamed-of
heights. "Adjusted" deficits (i.e., after more than $100 billion a
year in Social Security payments— allegedly untouchable— has
been "subtracted" from them) ranged from $200 billion to $245
billion annually, mostly in favor of new outlays for the
military. In contrast, domestic programs were drastically
slashed. Even President Bush's first, new budget proposed on
January 29, 1990 — a pre-Iraq budget— raised spending to an
all-new $1.23 trillion, with an alleged $63.1 billion shortfall for
1991. Instead of reducing the federal bureaucracy, as pledged,
President Reagan installed 10,000 new bureaucrats in the Pen-
tagon alone, according to former Secretary of the Navy
Lehman, of "600-ship-navy" fame. No wonder $3 trillion were
lavished on arms during ten Reagan-Bush years. No wonder
the federal and the public debts skyrocketed. No wonder that
existing disequilibria in the national economy worsened and
that fresh financial problems and crises arose.
Impelled by the movement toward "privatization" of the
public domain launched by the White House and fuelled by
the same, quasi-nineteenth-century "rags-to-riches" career that
Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken typified on Wall Street and
in Beverly Hills (the latter was rumored to have turned a tidy
profit of $1 billion in 1988), savings-and-loan institutions, big
The New World Disorder
411
banks and gigantic insurance empires speculated in real
estate, multi-billion-dollar loans to developing countries such
as Venezuela, Brazil and Peru, and floods of "junk bonds"— all
encouraged by the Reagan administration. When the develop-
ing economies defaulted on their debts and the real-estate
market (particularly in office buildings) turned sour (since it
was totally overextended), the bottom dropped out of the mad-
ly spiraling junk-bond boom, during the last Reagan year. The
consequences will be with us for decades to come. In one field
alone, the debacles in the insurance business— formerly the
very bedrock of bourgeois financial respectability— will send
tremors of instability throughout the economy for years.
The S & L fiascoes will saddle the American taxpayer with a
millennial debt of some $500 to $1000 billion dollars (as
estimated by cleanup supervisor Seidman). The bank
failures— over two hundred are expected to occur in 1991
alone— will incur even huger sums, sums which the U.S.
government can no longer make "liquid" unless it sells trillions
of dollars worth of national assets to foreign creditors. Also,
some of the shiniest names in U.S. capitalism, the Rockefeller
family jewels of Citicorp and Chase Manhattan, Manufac-
turers Hanover, Chemical Bank, and Bank of America, might
follow the slide into nothingness of the Bank of New England.
A severe and drastic currency-and-property reform might be
the only rational solution. An easy solution is, and will be, an
ever-accelerating spiral of foreign wars.
Very likely the U.S. government, led by President Bush, will
try a similar approach in "solving" his other crises, such as: an
urban-and-regional planning picture and a physical infrastruc-
ture that is falling to pieces; an educational system that is
seventeenth in literacy in the world; a health "system" that is
nonexistent for more and more middle-income Americans
and for the poor, one that is in last place (alongside that of the
Republic of South Africa) in providing adequate and vital
health care to citizens, amongst all industrialized nations; a
grave lag in basic research, outside of military applications
and "SDI"; and the effects of a complete disregard for energy
and environmental policy during the Reagan years. Despite lip
service to a higher, more intelligent, ideal the Bush govern-
ment follows in Reagan's wake. Perceived "emergencies," once
more, may induce bigger and better wars.
Let us elaborate a few illustrative examples. Urban, regional,
and national planning— never America's strong suit, yet a vital
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function of any government that intends to endure— has been
mortally neglected since 1981. The large cities that had been
sliding downhill for decades under the growing burdens of
blight, maladministration, poverty, a burgeoning proletariat
and a murderous crime rate (in spite of rather spotty and
symptom-oriented "help" from the federal government) have
been cut off from any meaningful, moral, financial and ad-
ministrative assistance by Reagan and Bush, and set adrift as
national derelicts. In effect, the hundred million people who
live in big urban centers are now considered so many "bums"
on a collective skid row. Protracted, interrelated, planned ef-
forts to reform and to clean up the nuclear industry (whether
military or civilian); to build an energy policy; to rebuild the
infrastructure of bridges, highways, and railroads; as well as
projects to plan for new regional mass transit networks, have
withered on the vine. Most of these, if carried out, would
make a valuable contribution to a national environmental
policy, and enable us to diminish our much-bruited
dependence on imported oil.
What is indeed "the shame of our cities" is worse, even, than
it was around the turn of the century, when their plight at-
tracted the muckrakers' attention. Philadelphia, perhaps the
most historic of America's big cities, in struggling futilely to
survive physically, let alone financially, but no one in
Washington raises an eyebrow. For the second time in sixteen
years, there is talk of receivership for New York City, the
capital of world plutocracy. As always, there will be talk of
running local and municipal government "according to ac-
cepted business methods." Nonsense. It is exactly because
American cities have been treated as money-making enter-
prises, because the spirit in which they have been "run"— with
the former exception of Social-Democratic (and German-
American) Milwaukee— has been that of the unproductive,
power-and-profit-mad "arbitrageur," that their ineffectiveness
and corruption have reached a low unequalled in the history
of the republic.
Yes, they can be saved and they should be saved. Yet for that
to happen America must recast its entire government and
society in the image of a Moral Oeconomy. We must reallocate
priorities drastically. No longer should a U.S. president be in a
position to donate more than $13 billion toward the construc-
tion of housing for immigrant Russian Jews in Israel (reported-
ly to reward Israel for "staying out" of the war against Iraq)
The New World Disorder
413
while he allocates a mere $15 billion in federal bloc grants to
all fifty U.S. states. Without a doubt, a single crisis-torn and
crime-overwhelmed state such as New York, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania or California could easily put all $15 billion in
federal support to good use by itself. Additionally, George
Bush has donated, or "forgiven," scores of billions of dollars to
countries around the world, from Argentina to Egypt, Turkey
and Poland, and— by implication— heavily subsidized the
Soviet Union, all in the service of buying support for his
military adventurism abroad. To top it all, he is spending, and
is calculating to spend, further hundreds of billions of non-
existent dollars for oppressive regimes around the world, and
for the development of exotic new weapons systems— even
after the huge tribute by America's client states is considered.
When will the bubble burst?
III. Skewed priorities and twisted logic — Why spend billions
of dollars on expanded and "improved" armaments for the
New World Order's millennial era of peace? It is indicative of
White House paranoia that, instead of engaging in true,
positive diplomacy to solve the root causes of crises, i.e. in the
Middle East (or, alternatively, pursuing a hands-off, America
First policy), in 1991 it is planning to construct a partial SDI-
Star Wars directed against imaginary missile attacks on the
U.S. by Third World countries, at a cost of $30, $40 or $50
billion, knowing that a full-fledged SDI directed against the
Soviet Union is technically impracticable. Furthermore, after
misspending trillions of dollars on armaments, including the
Stealth bomber and Stealth fighter (the stealthiest aspects of
which were the secrecy with which they were kept from the
American public), SDI, the MX, Minuteman and Trident
missiles, the Reagan and the Bush administrations have
prepared to spend a minimum of 280 billion additional dollars
toward the construction of brand-new weapons systems: an
ATF ("advanced tactical fighter," either the Lockheed YF-22 or
the Northrop YF-23), the Seawolf submarine and the LTH
("light tactical helicopter")— when well-nigh overwhelming
weapons systems are more than capable of continuing into the
future and were developed in the recent past at astronomical
expense.
By contrast, even Bush's 1990 proposal for the 1991 budget
already included $13.9 billion in cuts for domestic spending,
$5.5 billion coming from a Medicare program that had pre-
viously undergone repeated slashes. One may predict with
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with confidence that if George Bush's popularity in 1991
assures his reelection in 1992, he will proceed to slash
Medicare and other domestic "entitlements"— not excluding
Social Security— with gusto, to subsidize his growing appetite
for foreign aggrandizement. Beyond the unfortunate millions
of the elderly and the infirm affected, perhaps even harder hit
will be those 27 million Americans without any health in-
surance, including 12 million poverty-stricken children. En-
tire regions in the "Rust Belt" of the East and the Midwest, and
in the rural areas of the South and the mountain
states — already suffering from chronic, unregistered
unemployment and grinding poverty— will disappear by the
millions into the maelstrom of misery.
These are some of the dimensions of what President Carter
was accused of calling the Misery Index, the vicious conse-
quences of what bourgeois economists term Karl Marx's Vere-
Jendungstheorie.
They are very real, and they are growing.
What Can We Do?
"Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate."
(Abandon all hope, you who enter) —Dante's In/erno
The growing menace of the establishment of a total "gar-
rison state," with all that implies, at home and abroad (and it
implies eventual "genocide," mass murder, at home and
abroad) does not decree its inevitability. Historical deter-
minism exists in the minds of those who preach it. However,
its superficial opposite, pollyanna chamber-of-commerce
sanguinism, is even more misleading, for it lends itself to mass
manipulation by the corrupt. The sane fight for the rational ex-
ercise of will.
America does have choices. What are some of them?
The first might be called, somewhat misleadingly, the Max
Weberian alternative to Werner Sombart. The latter had writ-
ten persuasively about the successive— and more or less suc-
cessful—stages of capitalism, particularly about "Late
Capitalism" (a phrase which seems to denote that the wish for
its demise was the father to the thought). America's behavior
since the Great Depression, at home and abroad, has in many
striking ways corresponded to the various phases of Spdt-
kapitaJismus; the Reagan-Bush era might be regarded as one of
its ultimate stages of global panic. The "Reagan Revolution," in
The New World Disorder
415
other words, might be seen as a response to home and world
conditions, semi-consciously homologous to the cries of:
"Apres nous Je deluge!" and "Sauve qui peut!" from the French
power elite before and during France's revolutionary crisis of
the 1790's.
Yet there is an important component missing from this
equation: that of global hegemony. Scientific observers note
that the United States is the heir— not to the over-romanticized
"Anglo-Saxon-tradition of liberty"— but, more accurately, to
the instititionalized attitudes of absolute domination, con-
quest, power politics and plunder personified by the Norman
founders of the "English" (and, fascinatingly, of the Old Rus-
sian) states. Now, a millennium after the original conquests,
their descendants are facing off in their ultimate "showdown,"
as de Tocqueville foretold in the nineteenth century. No one
believes that the U.S.-Soviet "condominium" of the world of
1990-91 — a very cramped and one-sided affair— will last for
more than a few years.
Today's Yankee Hot Warriors are in an enviable position
geopolitically. Having conquered the Americas from Alaska to
Tierra del Fuego, or keeping them in a state of manifold sub-
jection without the inconvenience of physical occupation,
they are in a position to dominate all landmasses laved by the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Indeed, at bottom they are not
"capitalist" at all but "conquest plutocrats." They would readily
shed the latter part of this label, too, continuing their expan-
sionism even as socialists.
Yet their decision to keep strategic portions of the Persian
Gulf occupied, after making the mistake of attacking it
physically rather than solving the problem politically-
economically, reveals a glaring mental rigidity.
How much wiser to follow the advice of Max Weber, the
great social scientist, given at the time of the St. Louis World
Exposition of 1904: systematically to create a rationalized,
limited state through the establishment of a service
bureaucracy motivated by honor, the idea of duty and the
common good, and the notion of economy as "avoidance of
waste by careful planning and use."
Is it too late for that now, in 1991? I admit that such a truly
Prussian solution seems unappealing in the short run, perhaps
anywhere in America and Europe. But in the long run, in a
few decades and centuries, when the crises, catastrophes and
cataclysms brought on by following the erroneous "ideal" of
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Conquest Plutocracy with altogether too much ardor will have
at length exhausted themselves, then any new society and
government, to endure, will need to be built on rules close to
Max Weber's heart.
In a political culture which de-emphasizes and punishes
medium and long-range planning (even of the economic kind),
the "crisis" most government leaders' were concerned about in
the first half of 1991 is the prevailing, moderate (at least,
government spokesmen anxious to appear confident of the
future call it so) economic recession. Should these conditions
worsen it could mean dire things for our economy, govern-
ment and society: firms and industries saddled with heavy,
unproductive debts through "leveraged buy-outs" by "arbi-
trageurs" find it difficult to adjust to the new, leaner economic
climate. They are forced to lay off thousands, tens of
thousands, indefinitely. Some firms go under. A vicious cycle
develops, in which growing unemployment— unalleviated due
to government inaction— fuels a worsening recession while it
drains the public treasury further through passive unemploy-
ment compensation. In order to "lighten the load" of an
already disastrous deficit, the government feels called upon to
cut "entitlements" further, plunging millions more of the
middle-class and the poor into misery, and further reducing
their buying power. Unemployment payments are slashed,
too. More firms fail. The stock markets, which had been ex-
tremely over-extended and buoyant in the wake of a successful
war of the "foreign-adventurist" kind, turn sour. The Dow
Jones average plunges 600 points in a week. In the meantime,
tension spreads from coast to coast in urban regions which
have lost millions of jobs over the last decade, collectively, and
hundreds of thousands due to the recession. The economic
picture worsens. Demagogues whip emotions to a frenzy. A
single spark, in a society fractured along national, racial, and
sub-caste lines, and race war erupts, tearing the fabric of socie-
ty, throwing the economy into total chaos, causing trillions or
more dollars in damage and killing thousands, and more,
through violence, disease and exposure.
Such conditions of anomie might also provide a welcome
chance for the Soviet— or Russian— elite to redress its grie-
vances against the West and the U.S., either in step-by-step
progression or, more likely, by means of a surprise attack.
Thus, logically and historically, the dislocations and down-
The New World Disorder
417
turns brought on by the "Reagan Revolution," the late and
lamentable outcome of several centuries of evolution, quite
possibly will conclude with the much-dreaded World War and
World Revolution. The ultimate plutocrats would then be the
executors of Karl Marx's last will and testament.
In the short run, mankind might be granted a breather by
the 1992 U.S. elections. Probably, President George Bush and
Federal Reserve Board Chairman Allan Greenspan will pull
out the stops in a last effort to create "rosier" economic condi-
tions to achieve Bush's re-election. After that, it will be "every
man for himself." Despite (or because of) the economic union
of Europe in 1992, Germany will not be protected by its fellow
Europeans but, on the contrary, will be exposed to increased
levels of financial and political blackmail by the U.S., Israel,
Britain, France, Poland and Russia. Added to the increased
burdens of integrating the old Soviet Zone with West Ger-
many, and denuded of any practical military defenses after the
enforced concessions of 1990-91 ("The New Versailles"), even
Germany may be unable to stomach the redoubled demands.
Economically, socially and militarily, her downfall would
plunge Europe into ballooning disorder— unless America
desisted from her Divide and Conquer foreign policy and in-
tervened diplomatically to aid her strongest ally in Europe.
But, for several reasons, that is unlikely. If reelected in '92,
Bush will slash domestic "entitlements" in a desperate effort to
right the capsized economy. He will try to "shoulder off some
of those outlays on Germany and Japan. Too, the probable in-
crease in domestic U.S. unrest— heightened by the chauvinism
left over from the Gulf War— will make Uncle Sam regard the
comparative "tranquillity" for foreign competitors with a jaun-
diced eye. He will seek to export his troubles, imprudently
knocking out his main props.
There are already many choices in the possibilities por-
trayed.
Here are some more, always keeping in mind that our pre-
ferred option is to create a dialectics, a rational dialogue be-
tween the idea of "community" in politics and economics and
the idea of "freedom," with emphasis on the "legitimate self-
determination of peoples" on all levels of politics, from the
township to the international arena.
Internationally, how intelligent is it for the United States, for
instance, in its GATT-talks ("General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade") with the European Community, to insist that the
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Europeans cut their farm subsidies to the bone— while the
U.S. does not reciprocate by slashing subsidies to its huge in-
dustrial "farms" in California, Florida and elsewhere? Such a
move by Europeans would jeopardize the highly labor-inten-
sive, efficient, but tiny family farm in Europe, with roots going
back four or five thousand years, and would depopulate the coun-
tryside even more rapidly, adding to the urban proletariat and
causing social-political crisis. After all, that's what happened
two thousand years ago in ancient Rome.
Will the "New Rome" of Wall Street and Washington recog-
nize its own interest in preserving and building communities
abroad, after its total war and its victory in Iraq? There can be
no "total victory. "
The Bessmertnykh-Baker plan for remedying the grave prob-
lems of the Middle East comprehensively, and the Palesti-
nian situation in particular, brooks no delay. Despite the fact
that the U.S. irrationally injured its own interest in preserving
the status quo in the Mideast by smashing Saddam Hussein
and creating a power vacuum ready to be filled through the
designs of Iran, Turkey, Syria and Israel, thus destablizing
regional and world politics, we should subject our "unique
relationship" with Israel to an agonizing reappraisal. That is
what President Eisenhower did in 1956 (how things have
changed!) We all know that Israel is the nuclear-military super-
power of the Mideast and need fear no one on earth. By
means of suitable but swift diplomatic maneuvers, we should
make it clear to the ruling, reactionary cliques of Israel that:
America will not stand for the oppression of the Palestinians
by Israel; we insist on implementing U.S. Security Council
Resolution No. 242 and similar resolutions with a view toward
establishing a state for the Palestinians via the PLO; and
America will never accept Israeli designs on neighboring
states, and on Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iraq in particular.
What are the chances for success of such a scenario in a Bush
administration?
Turkey is the tertium gaudens, far from the international
limelight focused on such prime players as the U.S., Israel or
Iran, yet laughing with the contented glee of a peasant who
stands in the shadow of greater Powers and has struck a good
bargain. The Sancho Panzaesque figure of President Torgut
Ozal had only reinforced that impression.
Of course, Turkey in a geographically much larger guise, as
ruled by the once great Ottoman dynasty of sultans and
The New World Disorder
419
caliphs [khalifa, the "successors to the prophet," the titular
heads, temporal and spiritual, of all Islam), was the declining
imperial power of North Africa and the Middle East before the
First World War. At its end, only the outstanding leadership
qualities of General Mustafa Kemal (later proclaimed "Atatiirk"
or "Father of the Turk"), those of his aides, and the valor of the
Turkish soldiers, combined with the squabbling of the prime
imperialists: Britain, France and Italy and their tool, the
Kingdom of Greece, as well as the assistance provided by the
new Bolshevik regime of Soviet Russia, kept Turkey from
begin ripped to shreds by the victors, preserving her from
disappearing forever. A timely lesson for 1991.
The new, republican Turkey was confined largely to
Anatolia and the littoral of the northeast Mediterranean. She
was forced to accept the subjugation of large, centuries-old,
Turkish minorities in the new states of the East, ranging from
the southern reaches of the Soviet Union to Yugoslavia and all
the way to northern Iraq and Iran. In 1991 her claims to some
of these regions, particularly to oil-rich northern Iraq around
Mosul and Kirkuk, rest in part on the existence of these
minorities. Further, advancing pan-Turanian ideas, the Turks
have cast their eyes on the related Turkic majorities of
northern Iran and of central Asia east of the Caspian. If the
U.S. after 1991 rearms her, replacing her obsolete arms with
smart, hi-tech weapons systems, we can expect Turkey to play
a much more aggressive role in the Mideast. In the future, she
might prove troublesome to either a shrinking or an expand-
ing post-Soviet Russia.
We need also to remember that republican Turkey has been
no more lenient to her Kurdish minority than has Iraq. She
will watch the masses of new refugees with eagle eyes and
possibly misdirect them to advance her own aims against the
Arabs. It is the tragic plight of the Iraqi Kurds to have believed
the irresponsible pronouncements of an untrustworthy, and
apparently irrational, Superpower.
As for the Soviet Union or, more correctly, Russia, she has
been the Turks' chief enemy since the imperial-expansionist
days of the great Tsar Peter around the year 1700. Traditional-
ly, Russia has also sought to break up, or to dominate, neigh-
boring Persia (Iran). To the present day, her aim has been to
extend her hegemony over as much of the Persian gulf region,
and over Iran's eastern flanks of Afghanistan and Baluchi-
stan, as practicable. It has been her sad lot to see her main aim
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of sole autocracy stymied, in the nick of time, by an even more
powerful and even more ambitious rival from across the seas:
up to 1941 by Britain and since 1946 by the United States of
America. Unless Russia commits suicide, or is extirpated total-
ly, in her present Time of Troubles— which seems unlikely—
she will reassume her accustomed role in the not very distant
future, with a vengeance.
When— and if— she does, she will remember three past
events. Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War,
when Stalin invaded Finland in the infamous Winter War of
1939-1940, Britain and France went to work to prepare a two-
pronged invasion of the Soviet Union: in the north, through
Norwegian and Finnish Lapland, and, in the south, out of
Syria and Iraq. The operation was finally shelved when Hitler
pre-empted Churchill by striking north to Narvik and Norway.
Today, once again, the Soviets have reason to worry about the
strategic threat to their "soft underbelly," especially with
Georgia's declaration of independence on April 8, 1991, and
the possibility of this setting an example all along the southern
boundary of the USSR from Moldavia outside
Romania (the Soviets annexed it in 1940) to the Muslim na-
tions on the borders of Afghanistan and China. Let us not im-
agine that the USSR, or an imperial Russia, will tolerate a
strong U.S. or NATO presence in the Gulf Region for long.
By contrast, Russia cherishes her memories of the time after
June 22, 1941, when the leaf of history turned and she was in a
position, again, to partition Iran between herself and Britain,
supported by the U.S. In those heady times Stalin dominated
Teheran. His power was sufficient to enable him to carve out
virtual Soviet satellite states in Azerbaijan and the Kurdish
areas, and to attempt to extend his sphere of influence by en-
couraging the "independence" of the Kurds in Turkey and
Iraq. The famed Kurd leader, Mustafa Barzani, and his clan
were trained in Moscow. Soviet agents infiltrated the entire
region. Not until 1946 and 1947 did British and then
American resistance stiffen sufficiently to make it prudent for
Stalin to heed Iranian demands for withdrawal. The Soviets
cleared out— but only for the time being.
A third event the Russians will bear in mind with distaste is
the ill-disguised contempt they received at the hands of the
Yankees before, during and after the war against Iraq, a
former friend of theirs. Even though deep-seated divergences
The New World Disorder
421
were "papered over" at the U.N. and for the television watch-
ing publics, the U.S. made it abundantly clear that she no
longer deemed the Soviet Union a serious global factor diplo-
matically, economically or, for that matter, militarily. It is a
glaring indication of the mismatch in "clout" at the White
House that the objections of Israel— a Levantine dwarf state on
the face of it— prevailed over the Bessmertnykh-Baker agree-
ment concerning a comprehensive solution to the Mideast's
troubles, in which the foreign ministers of the two former
World Superpowers had invested their prestige. No lip service
to the "New World Order" for "a hundred years of peace" can
gloss over that high-handed conduct. Not that hauteur is
unrealistic, for the time being. But "realities" have a way of
changing explosively, leaving those unprepared at the mercy
of their panicky "flight-or-fight" response, whether inside the
Beltway or at the Kremlin.
No doubt the seeming disproportion between American and
Soviet power, and the sudden successes of American
weaponry against the largely antiquated Soviet equipment and
tactics of the Iraqis — as well as the exaggerated ruthlessness of
its application— meant but one thing to a Russian leadership
worried about survival: the absolute necessity of once more
catching up again to and, if possible, surpassing the U.S. in the
creation of weapons of mass destruction— whether "conven-
tional" or "unconventional"— in the shortest time possible.
Thus, automatically, our war against Iraq has made the Rus-
sian leaders more rigid in their outlook and in choosing their
ways and means. It has produced the exact opposite of its an-
nounced intention, has injured the peace, and dealt a body
blow to the concept of international "law and order." Did we
want that to happen?
Naturally, when the motives of fear of the unknown, hatred
for one's adversary, and ambition hold each other in approx-
imate balance in both the White House and the Kremlin (with
ambition overweening the former and fear dominating the lat-
ter) an uneasy truce could be maintained for a time. But the
Warsaw Pact has dissolved itself. Except for the continued
survival of their Communist parties, the USSR has lost most of
its hold over its central European satellites. Yet far from
reciprocating in kind, Uncle Sam is holding on tightly to his
NATO allies, even readying the expansion of his force-shield
to cover the former Soviet zone of Germany, which still "plays
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host" to 350,000 Soviet troops.
Indeed, leaning on his two main foreign props— Japan and
Germany— financially, geopolitically and propagandistically,
in 1991 Uncle Sam is accelerating rather than cutting his
weapons expenditures, even though the Soviet menace seems
to have diminished and the Third World should not be
perceived as a "foe." When a single aircraft of a single weapons
system (the B-2 "Stealth" bomber) costs nearly $1 billion, and
the costs of other armaments trail closely behind, one should
be able to calculate the following rather accurately: 1. the time
before the American economy, already unbalanced and
distorted, spins totally out of control; 2. the same for Ger-
many, Europe, and Japan; 3. the irreparable injury to the
social, political, health and educational fabric, and perhaps to
the national integrity, of the American people; 4. the
desperate attempts by the USA and the Great Britain to re-
establish the shattered "concert of nations" by force and
through the United Nations Security Council, based on the far-
reaching and questionable political, financial, territorial and
functional dictates imposed on a sovereign state, i.e., the far
reaching precedents set by the U.N. in its subjugation of Iraq
in 1991; 5. in case of failure: the rapid and unprecedentedly
violent outbreak of global war.
But there are choices.
Here are some of them:
1. If America desires to extablish and to strengthen stability
and legitimacy in the Middle East, we need to strike a just
balance between powerful, violent Israel and the multitude of
militarily and socially weak Arab states. U.N. Security Council
Resolution No. 242 should be implemented so that the Palesti-
nians can at last have an independent homeland (and state) on
their native soil, secure from Zionist encroachment. Equally
important, the much-quoted "comprehensive solution" to the
region's historic, political, social, economic and military
troubles needs to put in place a lasting, insitutionalized level-
ing of its abysmal divergences, a "regional development plan"
for all. A regional "community" of interest should be grown,
like a plant, encompassing all cultures and religions, while
cherishing all organically grown groupings.
Is it realistic to speak of such a modernized revival of the an-
cient Ottoman millet system? Only time, and a nuclear-free
zone stretching from the Mediterranean to the Ganges, and far
The New World Disorder
423
beyond, can tell. Let's rid ourselves of the illusion that Israel is
America's terrible swift sword in the desert.
2. America might choose to impose a New World Order
through a superficially cordial entente with an ever-more
desperate Russia. But we must face the fact that by reason of
clashing global ambitions, lasting cooperation between the
two is undesired by the White House, and unlikely, unless
another convenient Foreign Devil, e.g. Japan or Germany, is
found.
If, on the other hand, we desire to honor our loudly pro-
claimed "values" of freedom— infused into organic com-
munities—and of popular self-determination, we should in-
telligently and actively support the independence of the anti-
Communist republics of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine,
Moldavia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and
others, while Russia is preoccupied with its internal troubles.
Such action would incur the risk of war with the Russians.
But by most accounts we could hold their feet to the fire before
they rain fire down on us.
3. Above all, if, for the next several centuries, Americans
wish their country to remain a nation worthy of its highest
ideals, we might do worse than swear off our old Norman-
Puritan habits of loot, plunder and mass destruction, as well as
our immediate past of Plutocracy by conquest at home and
abroad, and at last pursue a type of society and government
that strives to do lasting and organized justice to the rooted
human needs for community, freedom and truth, and to the
cosmic demands of the ecologies of nature.
"Omnes can tan t una voce tamen non est sin/onia."
(Though all sing with one voice that still does not make a
symphony) St Thomas Aquinas
If we try to enforce rigid conformity at home and abroad, we
shall come a cropper. Whipping up bellicose emotions,
rebuilding FDR's detention camps of the Great American
Desert for dissenters and engaging in global interventionism
will merely multiply the crushing moral and material burdens
already heaped on the sagging shoulders of the American peo-
ple. How much wiser to promote community-building on all
societal levels, in all political-geographic regions, a subsidiar-
ity of responsibilities!
At home, the American people— once we have recovered
our healthy sense of skepticism— might elect to undo the
424
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Imperial Presidency, and choose to place in its stead a plural
executive, a council of state patterned on Switzerland, with
five to seven presidents, each to represent a major ethnic,
racial or geographic constituency, with each president serving
for the duration of one year. Abroad, let us shrug off the moral
degradation, the abysmal functional and systematic failures of
trying to be the World's Policeman! Encourage the formation,
not of "pluralism," for that term has become a synonym for
chaos, but of multicentricity, the building of strong power
blocs on all populated landmasses, not excluding North, Cen-
tral, and South America. The latter solution to the worsening
crisis of the Americas was already envisioned by President
Thomas Jefferson.
Let us extend the hand of friendship to the peoples of Islam.
Split and weak as they may be politically and militarily, and
enslaved as they certainly are by underdevelopment and neo-
colonialism, they are the living heirs to some of the world's
most brilliant cultures: ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia,
Hindu and Moghul India and Indonesia among them. Islam
has contributed immeasurably to the growth of Europe, and it
can do so again. Let the West beware lest we drive Islam into
the isolation of hate, from which only organized violence will
offer escape.
Once they have divested themselves of the emanations of
the will to absolute power, the preoccupation with exploits
and exploitation— which have their most immediate origin in
the Industrial Revolution and in the unreason of the
Enlightenment of the 18th century- the great nations of
Europe will be able to regain their historic callings: Spain, the
great central European bloc that was the Holy Roman Empire,
as well as Poland and Ukraine (the Old RoS), and others, will
be re-awakened to new life. The spiritual, and political-
geographic center, the historic orientation, they had lost will
be resurrected.
No matter what the future, the American People— the pre-
eminent victim and foe of Conquest Plutocracy and the Im-
perial Presidency— have greatness to give. A nation in-
complete, a people not yet coalesced, which has brought forth
such masters and masterworks as Herman Melville's Moby
Dick; Robert Frost in his almost German simple-heartedness
and profundity; Joseph Campbell and his supremely Protes-
tant hyper-individualism, his longing for the merging of self
The New World Disorder
425
with the Absolute ( a property of "late" historical eras): such a
nation— once it has sloughed off the notion of being history's
Chosen People, leading a lowly flock to an earthly paradise—
has much to contribute to the good of this world. By defini-
tion, we note, an earthly paradise swamps the Moral
Oeconomy with the rush of an infinity of manufactured sup-
plies, it affects to abolish all suffering, all sacrifices for the at-
tainment of some distant, greater, good; it is totally intolerant
and destructive of any other path to perfection. In fine, it is
evil incarnate.
The choice is simple. Beyond all administrative reform, we
must bend our hearts and minds, freely, toward creativity and
responsibility, or Totalitarianism will do it for us by obliter-
ating all mind, all hearts.
Ponder the lines of England's poet laureate, of Alfred Lord
Tennyson, written in 1842:
. . . For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would
be;
Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic
sails,
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly
bales;
Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a
ghastly dew,
From the heavens's airy navies grappling in the central blue;
Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing
warm,
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-
storm;
Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags
were furl'd
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.
There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm
in awe,
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Locksley Hall
426
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
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Mortimer, Edward, Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam, Random
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Schraeder, Peter J., ed., Intervention in the WSO's: U.S. Foreign Policy
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1989
Segev, Samuel, The Iranian Triangle, The Untold Story of Israel's Role
in the Iran-Contra Affair, The Free Press, New York, 1988
The New World Disorder
427
Tillman, Seth P., The United States in the Middle East, Indiana
University Press, Bloomington, 1982
Waldo, Dwight, The Administrative State, The Ronald Press Com-
pany, New York, 1948
Wessell, Nils H., The New Europe, The Academy of Political
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Television Documentaries:
America's Defense Monitor, Center for Defense Information,
Washington, D.C., Program No. 417: "Alternatives to War in the
Middle East," 1991
America's Defense Monitor, Program No. 420: "Consequences of War
in the Gulf," 1991
PBS Frontline, "Election Held Hostage," WMVS Milwaukee, April
16, 1991
PBS Frontline, "High Crime and Misdemeanors," WMVS
Milwaukee, April 23, 1991
Newspapers and Periodicals:
Amerika Woche, Chicago, April 7, 1991; "Gerichtsprotokolle iiber
alliierte Kriegsverbrechen"
Amerika Woche, November 10, 1990; "Willy Brandt will Bagdad-
Geiseln"
Amerika Woche, March 30, 1991; "Verbote mit Hintertiirchen"
Chicago Tribune, April 4, 1991; "Business: 'Reformer, Warning
Haunt China Congress'; 'U.S. Trade Plan Extends Bar on Mexican
goods'"
The Council Chronicle, May 1991, the Chicago Council on Foreign
Relations; "Is Free Trade on the Way Out"; "The New World Order"
DeutschJand Nachrichten, March 22, 1991, German Information
Center, 950 Third Avenue, New York 10022
DeutschJand Nachrichten, March 29, 1991
Investment Focus, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, January
1991; "Research Viewpoints: Looking toward the New Year"
Investment Focus, April 1991; "Reform Taxes to Revive the Saving
Habit"
Der Luftkrieg iiber DeutschJand 1939-1945, DTV Dokumente, accor-
ding to "Dokumente deutscher Kriegsschaden" published by the
Federal Minister for Expellees, Refugees and those Damaged by
War, Bonn; Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, 1963
428
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Merrill Lynch Ready Assets Trust, Annual Report, December 31,
1990;
The Literary Gazette, "Literaturnaya Gazeta" International, Moscow-
Washington, Volume 1, Issue 5, April 1990
The Milwaukee Advocate, April 1991, "Operation Desert Profits"
The Milwaukee Journal, January 29, 1990
The Milwaukee Journal, February 24, 1991, "The Attack Begins"
The Milwaukee Journal, March 24, 1991, "U.S. Taxpayers May Escape
Footing the Bill for Gulf War"
The Milwaukee Sentinel, February 28, 1991 "Victory!"
The Milwaukee Sentinel, March 2, 1991, "Bush to Move Fast to Settle
Mideast Rifts," "Highway to Hell"
Pakistan Affairs, Embassy of Pakistan, 2315 Massachusetts Avenue,
N.W., Washington D.C. 20008, November 7, 1990, "IJIIIslami
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Pakistan Is Making Nuclear Device: Tutwiler"; December 1, 1990,
"Huge Indian Military Build-Up Poses Regional Threat— President";
January 1, 1991, "U.N. Overwhelmingly Approves Pakistan's Pro-
posals on Nuclear Disarmament"; February 16, 1991, "Prime
Minister Embarks on Second Round of Peace Mission"; "President
Comments on Gulf Policy"; March 23, 1991, Special Pakistan Day
Issue, "Pakistan Has a Potential Role in Security of Persian Gulf and
South Asia"
Popular Science, April 1991
Die Presse, Wien, March 28, 1991, "High Noon am Roten Platz," "Vor
UN-Waffenstillstandsresolution"; "Vor Regierungswechsel in Jugo-
slawien"; "Risse in der Achse Bonn-Paris"
Rheinischer Merkur, Bonn, September 28, 1990
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 24, 1989, "Contras Never Had a
Chance to Win, Ex-U.S. General Says"
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 11, 1989, "Degrade and Conquer"
Suddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, July 6, 1989
Scientific American, January 1991, "Essay— B.R. Inman and Daniel F.
Burton, Technology and Competitiveness'"
Scientific American, May 1991, "Science and the Citizen- 'Up in
Flames, Kuwait's Burning Oil Wells Are a Sad Test of Theories'";
"U.S. Gags Discussion of War's Environmental Effects"; quote: ". . .
Satellite images would reveal that Allied bombing of Iraqi refineries
and oil reserves had 'created an appalling smoke cloud' comparable
to the one created by the Iraqi sabotage of Kuwait's oil fields . . ."
(recommended reading for a critique of Uncle Sam's censorship of
the news")
The New World Disorder
429
The Washington Report on Middle East Affaris, September 1990
The Week in Germany, November 23, 1990, German Information
Center, New York
The Week in Germany, April 12, 1991
430
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
[continued from page 388)
lies— that he, too, and his administration was taken completely
by surprise, and that Admiral Kimmel and General Short, the
Navy and Army commanders at Pearl, deserved censure and
ruined careers for their unpreparedness— and works on, to-
day, with exemplary fairness to establish the precise respon-
sibility of Roosevelt and his lieutenants for the Pearl Harbor
debacle.
Two long book reviews complement these two long essays.
JHR Associate Editor Mark Weber, an expert witness in the
second trial of Ernst Ziindel, reports on Robert Lenski's
substantial account of that trial. Jack Wikoff, a student of
twentieth-century propaganda in word and image, contributes
an assessment of S.J. Taylor's important biography of New
York Times-man and Pulitzer-Prize winner Walter Duranty,
who deliberately hushed up a real Holocaust, Stalin's annihila-
tion of millions of Ukrainians and other Soviet subjects
through starvation and disease, even as the Roosevelt ad-
ministration hastened to recognize the mass-murderer and his
regime in 1933. Thus work on another key Revisionist project
picks up steam— rather than rehash the sordid crimes of Red
Russia, known virtually as soon as they were committed by in-
fluential Western opinion-makers, we focus on precisely those
journalists, academics, politicians, and bureaucrats who con-
cealed, minimized or defended (in the name of "anti-Fascism")
our century's real laureates of tyranny and genocide.
A new section, "Document" will attempt precisely that in
this and forthcoming issues: to document from primary
sources aspects of the Second World War unfamiliar to
Americans schooled and spoonfed on the authorized pro-
paganda of the "Good War." Our GI's sometimes less than
scrupulous about taking prisoners? Read and weep. Or better,
read and think . . .
A 1958 commentary and interview with the late Admiral
Husband E. Kimmel by the late, distinguished American
lawyer and educator Dean Clarence Manion (of Notre Dame
Law School) moves and informs not merely for its revelations
of Kimmel's views of Pearl Harbor, but for the principled, non-
interventionist American conservatism that we have all but
lost to the baying pack of "neo-cons" and "new rightists." Carl
Hottelet says what must be said about "Holocaust education":
[continued on page 468)
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years
of Controversy
CHARLES LUTTON
At 7:49 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, 183 Japanese
dive- and torpedo bombers, accompanied by Zero
escorts, launched the first of two attacks against the American
base at Pearl Harbor. A second wave of 168 Japanese aircraft
arrived at 9 a.m. Eighteen operational warships, including
four battleships, were sunk or heavily damaged; 188 aircraft
were destroyed. 2403 Americans were killed, among them 68
civilians, and 1178 were wounded.
Although the Japanese achieved local surprise, their success
was less than complete. The Pacific Fleet's three aircraft
carriers were not in port. Nine heavy cruisers, all but three
light cruisers, and virtually all of the destroyers remained
afloat. None of the fleet's submarines was lost. And the
commander of the Japanese task force, Admiral Chuichi
Nagumo, refused to authorize a third strike that could have led
to the destruction of Pearl Harbor's naval dockyards and oil
storage tanks, the loss of which would have neutralized
Hawaii as a forward base for counter-offensives against
Japanese moves towards the Philippines, Malaya, and the
Dutch East Indies.
The attack solved President Franklin D. Roosevelt's most
pressing problem: how to overcome the American public's
opposition to involvement in the war that had been going on
in Europe for the previous sixteen months (on the eve of Pearl
Harbor, polls indicated that 80 per cent of the people did not
want the United States to enter the war as an active
participant). Roosevelt received overwhelming support when
he asked Congress for a declaration of war against Japan. The
grass-roots America First movement quietly disbanded. On
December 11th, Germany and Italy declared war against the
United States. American resolve to "defeat the dictators" was
near unanimous.
If the public united behind Roosevelt and Churchill in the
war effort, almost from the first there were serious questions
432
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
raised about the attack that had brought America into the
world conflict. Who was accountable for the disaster? Was it
avoidable? Why had the Japanese attacked? Had there been
any American provocation? And why had Pearl Harbor's able
Navy and Army commanders, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel
and General Walter Short, been caught off guard? Why were
they quickly retired under unusual circumstances?
To head off congressional and public criticism, Roosevelt
hastily appointed a special commission to investigate the
attack. Chaired by Associate Supreme Court Justice Owen J.
Roberts, a leading supporter of the pro-interventionist
Committee to Aid America by Aiding the Allies, the President
had no fear that the commission would do anything to
compromise the spirit of unity that now prevailed. Justice
Roberts completed his report on Friday, January 23, 1942. The
Administration released it to the public in time for the Sunday
newspapers. Key members of the Washington political and
military establishment were absolved of any blame. The fault,
they said, lay with Admiral Kimmel and General Short.
First Revisionist Critiques
But not all were convinced. In September 1944, John T.
Flynn launched Pearl Harbor revisionism when he published
a forty-six page booklet entitled The Truth about Pearl Harbor.
Flynn argued that Roosevelt and his cronies had been plotting
war against Japan at least since January 1941. The
Administration continued needlessly to provoke the Japanese
government throughout the rest of the year, and on November
26, 1941, delivered a diplomatic ultimatum that no
government could possibly accept. Flynn also suggested that
Kimmel and Short were given the wrong instructions from
Washington headquarters, thus aborting the taking of effective
measures at the base.
In early 1945, a thirty-year-old historian, William L.
Neumann, published a brochure, The Genesis of Pearl Harbor.
He reviewed the diplomatic background to the outbreak of the
war and pointed out how the Roosevelt Administration had
launched an economic war against Japan in the summer and
fall of 1941. Neumann concluded that both sides were
responsible, but that Washington could not have been
surprised by the attack at Pearl Harbor, given FDR's
diplomatic activities in the months and days preceding
December 7th.
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
433
Army and Navy Reports Released
After VJ-Day, President Harry Truman permitted the release
of the Army and Navy special investigations of the Pearl
Harbor attack. The Navy Court of Inquiry, headed by Admiral
Orin G. Murfin, met from July 24-September 27, 1944. They
concluded that Admiral Harold R. Stark, the Chief of Naval
Operations, had failed to provide Admiral Kimmel all of the
information possessed in Washington, thereby denying the
Hawaii command a more complete picture of the situation.
Kimmel was exonerated. His plans were judged "sound," but
were dependent on "advance knowledge that an attack was to
be expected." And given his limited military resources,
Kimmel had conducted long-range aerial reconnaissance
appropriate to the intelligence he had been given and the
number of aircraft available.
Lt. General George Grunert chaired the Army Pearl Harbor
Board, which met from July 20-October 20, 1944. Evidence
from 151 witnesses was collected in Washington, D.C., San
Francisco, and Hawaii. While the Board was critical of
General Short, for the first time attention was directed toward
General George Marshall and the War Department. Marshall
was censured for failing to keep Short fully apprised of the
deteriorating state of U.S.-Japanese relations; of failing to cor-
rect Short's "sabotage alert" preparations at Pearl Harbor (U.S.
aircraft were bunched wing-tip to wing-tip on December 7th,
because Washington had told Short to guard against sabotage.
Had he been alerted to a possible air attack, the planes would
have been scattered and sheltered in revetments to guard
against bomb blast); of failing to send critical information to
Short on the evening of December 6th and the morning of
December 7th; of failing to determine if the state of readiness
at Pearl Harbor was commensurate with the potential threats
to the base's security. General Leonard Gerow, Chief of the Ar-
my's War Plans Division, was also reproved. He had failed, the
Board concluded, to keep the Hawaiian command informed
about Japanese moves that were known in Washington; of fail-
ing to make the November 27th warning clear and concise;
and of failing to see that joint Army-Navy plans were properly
effected.
Needless to say, Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Navy
Secretary James Forrestal were alarmed that blame for the suc-
cess of the Japanese attack had been shifted from the local
434
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
commanders to their superiors in Washington. To supplement
the report of the Army Pearl Harbor Board, Major Henry
Clausen was selected to head a one-man investigation. But no
public report was released. Forrestal had Admiral W. Kent
Hewitt continue to investigate Pearl Harbor. No separate
report was issued, but on August 29, 1945, Forrestal announc-
ed that, on the basis of Hewitt's inquiries, "Admiral Husband
E. Kimmel and Admiral Harold R. Stark, particularly during
the period 27 November to 7 December, 1941, failed to
demonstrate the superior judgment necessary to exercising
command commensurate with their rank and assigned
duties."
The Army and Navy Reports provided fresh ammunition to
the redoubtable John T. Flynn, who, in September 1945,
issued a fifteen-page report entitled The Final Secret of Pearl
Harbor. Flynn's findings were not limited to review by a small
circle of interested friends, but were given wide circulation
thanks to the Chicago Tribune, which highlighted his work.
Flynn concluded that Franklin Roosevelt was to blame for
diplomatic mismanagement; for keeping the Pacific Fleet sta-
tioned at the insecure Pearl Harbor base; and for stripping
Pearl Harbor of needed defensive equipment.
Reviewing the diplomatic prelude to the attack, Flynn ex-
plained that FDR undermined the position of Japanese
moderates and so orchestrated events that General Tojo and
the "War Agitators" took power in Tokyo. Despite provoca-
tions, it became clear that Germany was not going to declare
war against the United States. It was at this point, said Flynn,
that Roosevelt turned the screws on the Japanese.
Flynn went on to note the "Gift from the Gods" that the
cracking of the Japanese diplomatic codes represented. Flynn
was under the impression that the British had first broken the
Japanese code and supplied Washington with copies of
messages between Tokyo and its foreign representatives. He
underscored the significance of the fact that Washington was
aware that Japan had given its diplomats a November 25th
deadline to reach an understanding with the U.S.
In a section, 'The Fog at Pearl Harbor," Flynn emphasized
that the commanders at Pearl Harbor were told "literally
nothing" about the intercepted Japanese messages and the
rapidly deteriorating state of affairs. Short was ordered to
guard against sabotage and internal disorder from the large
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
435
Japanese population in Hawaii, and warned that Japanese
military operations could be expected soon, but against such
targets as the Kra Peninsula, Guam, Singapore, and Malaya.
And Flynn re-emphasized a point that is still too often
obscured in discussions of the attack, namely, "that KimmePs
fleet was not there to protect Pearl Harbor. The harbor was
there merely as a fuel and supply base for it. The fleet had a
task assigned to it in case of war. The protection of the base
would be the duty of the Army and the base naval installa-
tions."
In his discussion of "The Night Before Pearl Harbor" Flynn
charged that the story given the public about Roosevelt being
surprised by the attack on Pearl Harbor was "utterly
fraudulent." Based on the intercepted messages, FDR knew
that hostilities were soon to commence. What "warnings" were
finally sent to Hawaii were deliberately delivered by the
slowest possible means, as a face-saving measure.
Flynn went on to show how blame for the disaster was
cleverly shifted from Washington to the Hawaiian com-
manders, Kimmel and Short. He further discussed how the
fleet had come to be based at Pearl Harbor over the objections
of KimmePs predecessor, Admiral Richardson, who was con-
vinced that any ships berthed there would be an easy target*
In his summary of the tragedy, Flynn reiterated his view that
Roosevelt had decided to go to war with Japan, despite his
public pledges to the American people not to make their sons
fight in foreign wars, and that he had promised the British to
fight long before December 7th. When the attack came at Pearl
Harbor, the "amateur Commander-in-Chief , tried to place the
blame on Kimmel and Short. "Now," he concluded, "if there is
a shred of decency left in the American people, they will de-
mand that Congress open the whole ugly business to the light
of day.**
*As is the case today, the Pacific Fleet was based on the West coast
of the United States (San Diego, San Francisco). FDR personally
ordered it moved to the unprepared Pearl Harbor facility in 1940.
**Long out-of-print, John T. Flynn's The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor
can be found as an appendix in Cover Up: The Politics of Pearl Har-
bor, 1941-1946 by Bruce Bartlett (New Rochelle, New York: Arl-
ington House, 1978).
436
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
The Congressional Hearings
A concurrent resolution of Congress brought into being the
Joint Congressional Committee on the Investigation of the
Pearl Harbor Attack. The Administration hoped that the Com-
mittee, which had a majority of Democrats, would satisfy
public curiosity while safeguarding the standing of the
political party in power. Senator Alben Barkley (D-Kentucky)
served as chairman. The five other Democrats included
Senator Walter F. George (Georgia), Senator Scott Lucas (Il-
linois), Rep. J. Bayard Clark (North Carolina), Rep. John W.
Murphy (Pennsylvania), and Rep. Jere Cooper (Tennessee),
who was Vice Chairman. The Democrats selected the legal
staff.
Four Republicans were on the Committee: Senator Owen
Brewster (Maine), Senator Homer Ferguson (Michigan), Rep.
Bertrand Gearhart (California), and Rep. Frank B. Keefe
(Wisconsin). The Republican Minority were not provided with
their own staff. However, John T. Flynn raised funds from
private sources to permit Percy Greaves, a former associate
research director for the Republican National Committee, to
assist the Republican members of the Joint Congressional
Committee. Without Greaves's able work, much of the Pearl
Harbor story would have remained hidden from the public.
The Committee sat from November 15, 1945 to May 31,
1946. The Democratic majority managed to steer the hearings
in such a manner as to deflect as much criticism as they could
from the late President Roosevelt. Thanks to the persistence of
Senator Ferguson, aided by Greaves, "inconvenient" testimony
was extracted from a number of the witnesses, and evidence
that contradicted the Roberts Commission Report was placed
on the record. The evidence, exhibits, hearings, and con-
cluding report came to some forty volumes.
The "Majority Report" concluded that Japan's brilliantly
planned attack had been entirely unprovoked and there was
no evidence that the Roosevelt cabinet had maneuvered Japan
into launching a first strike in order to force Congress into
declaring war. Indeed, the Democrats asserted that Roosevelt,
Hull, and Stimson had done everything they could possibly do
to avoid war with Japan. The disaster at Pearl Harbor was due
to the failure of the local commanders to take adequate
measures to detect a possible attack and maintain proper
readiness to meet likely threats. The report did suggest that the
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
437
War Department should have notified Gen. Short that his
"sabotage alert" measures were not enough. In addition, Army
and Navy intelligence should have realized the significance of
Japanese efforts to keep abreast of the location of U.S. war-
ships berthed at Pearl Harbor (the "Bomb Plot" messages that
military intelligence had decoded). Finally, during the forty-
eight hours prior to the attack, the War and Navy Departments
should have kept on a higher state of alert and notified Pearl
Harbor about the impending diplomatic break that the
Japanese had scheduled to take effect from 1 p.m. Washington
time on December 7th.
A "Minority Report" was issued under the signatures of
Senators Brewster and Ferguson. They listed some twenty
"conclusions of Fact and Responsibility." President Roosevelt
was held "responsible for the failure to enforce continuous, ef-
ficient, and appropriate cooperation among the Secretary of
War, the Secretary of the Navy, the Chief of Staff (General
Marshall), and the Chief of Naval Operations (Admiral Stark)
in evaluating information and dispatching clear and positive
orders to the Hawaiian commanders as events indicated the
growing imminence of war." Roosevelt was especially at fault,
between Saturday night December 6th, and Sunday morning,
the 7th, for failing "to take that quick and instant executive ac-
tion which was required by the occasion."
Rep. Frank Keefe submitted his own "Additional Views"
after having, with Republican Rep. Gearhart (who was in a
tough re-election campaign) signed the "Majority Report."
Keefe admitted that the "concept of an Incident' as a factor
which would unify public opinion behind an all-out war effort
either in the Atlantic or Pacific had influenced the thinking of
officials in Washington for a long time." As early as October
1940, Roosevelt had considered blockading Japan. Keefe also
found it significant that just days before the attack on Pearl
Harbor Roosevelt personally ordered the Navy to dispatch
three small vessels from the Philippines into the path of
Japanese warships then steaming towards Southeast Asia. The
Congressman felt that this singular action was intended to
provoke an "overt" Japanese attack on American ships that
could serve as the incident needed to bring the United States
officially into the war.
440
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
On November 22, Tokyo informed its special envoys to the
United States, Kichisaburo Nomura and Saburo Kurusu, that
if an agreement was not reached with the U.S., British, and
Dutch by November 29th, "the deadline absolutely cannot be
changed. After that things are automatically going to happen."
In another message that Washington read, Tokyo informed
its Ambassador to Berlin on November 30 that diplomatic ef-
forts to resolve differences with the United States "now stand
ruptured— broken." He was instructed to inform Chancellor
Hitler "that there is extreme danger that war may suddenly
break out between the Anglo-Saxon nations and Japan
through some clash of arms ... the time for the breaking out of
this war may come quicker than anyone dreams."
During the Joint Congressional hearings, Captain Laurance
Safford, the Chief of the U.S. Navy's Security Intelligence
Communications (Op-20-G), testified that Tokyo broadcast the
"East Wind Rain" message in its overseas news broadcast of
Thursday, December 4, 1941, at 8:30 a.m., Washington time.
The U.S. Navy receiving station at Cheltenham, Maryland, in-
tercepted the message, which wjas forwarded to the Navy
Department in Washington. Safford informed the Congres-
sional Committee that, "There was a 'winds' message. It meant
war- and we knew it meant war." But Washington refused to
pass this critical information on to the commanders at Pearl
Harbor. And, as Morgenstern revealed, efforts were made to
strip all files of evidence of the receipt of the "Winds" intercept
and to discredit Capt. Saf ford's testimony.
Morgenstern made it clear to his readers that Kimmel and
Short took the appropriate action, given the information and
instructions they received from their superiors. But he
reiterated that:
they were denied three principal categories of intelligence:
1. Knowledge of the conduct of America's side of the
ddiplomatic negotiations, showing that Japan had been put in a
box where it must knuckle under or fight.
2. Knowledge of hundreds of significant Japanese
diplomatic code intercepts informing Roosevelt and his circle
not only that Japan would fight, but when war was coming.
3. Knowledge of messages to and from Tokyo and its corps
of spies in Hawaii, pointing precisely to Pearl Harbor as the
target for attack.
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
441
By late November, Roosevelt and his inner circle knew that
war was coming. Morgenstern cited Secretary of War Henry
Stimson's diary entry of November 25, 1941:
He [FDR] brought up the event that we were likely to be
attacked, perhaps [as soon as] next Monday, for the Japanese
are notorious for making an attack without warning and the
question was how we should maneuver them into the position
of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to
ourselves.
Finally, having considered the evidence, the author took up
the question of "who was guilty?" He reminded readers that
Roosevelt and his defenders failed to disclose:
. . . the part played in bringing about the result of December 7
by its campaign of economic warfare, its secret diplomacy, its
secret diplomacy, its covert military alliances, the submission
of demands which Japan found "humiliating," and its own com-
plete abandonment of neutrality in favor of nondeclared war . .
. When it became apparent, a few days after Pearl Harbor, that
the manifest failures which contributed to the crushing defeat
at Oahu could not be blamed solely on the Japanese, Roosevelt
and his associates in the civilian government and high com-
mand invented some new villains to divert the guilt from
themselves. For the defeat at Pearl Harbor the blame— all of the
blame, not part of it— was apportioned between Adm. Kimmel
and Gen. Short.
Later, as the war drew to an end and new doubts were
raised, President Truman shifted blame from Washington to
the American people as a whole. Said Truman, "The country
was not ready for preparedness ... I think the country is as
much to blame as any individual in this final situation that
developed in Pearl Harbor." But it was not the American peo-
ple who had waged economic warfare against Japan. And it
was not the public that had shipped weapons to Britain and
Russia at the expense of the U.S. armed forces.
Morgenstern rejected Truman's arrogant charge and instead
directed the blame precisely where the evidence indicated that
it lay:
The United States was neither informed nor alerted when
Roosevelt and the men whose intentions coincided with his
(because their fortunes rode with him) were warping the nation
into war in 1941. The motives of these men are to this day
obscure. They are even more obscure in the light of the default
of all promises concerning the objectives of World War II . . .
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THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
All of these men must answer for much. With absolute
knowledge of war, they refused to communicate that
knowledge, clearly, unequivocally, and in time, to the men in
the field upon whom the blow would fall. The silence in
Washington can yield to no other explanation than a desire to
do nothing that would deter or forestall the attack which would
produce the overt act so long and so fervently sought. When
the price of silence proved to be 2,326 lives, it was necessary to
add two more victims to the list— Adm. Kimmel and Gen. Short
. . . They failed— with calculation -to keep the United States
out of war and to avoid a clash with Japan . . . The "warnings"
they sent to Hawaii failed— and were so phrased and so
handled as to insure failure.
Pearl Harbor was the first action of the acknowledged war,
and the last battle of a secret war upon which the administra-
tion had long since embarked. The secret war was waged
against nations which the leadership of this country had
chosen as enemies months before they became formal enemies
by a declaration of war. It was waged also, by psychological
means, by propaganda, and deception, against the American
people, who were thought by their leaders to be laggard in
embracing war. The people were told that acts which were
equivalent to war were intended to keep the nation out of war.
Constitutional processes existed only to be circumvented, until
finally the war-making power of Congress was reduced to the
act of ratifying an accomplished fact.
It is encouraging to report that George Morgenstern's classic
account of the Pearl Harbor tragedy has at long last been
reprinted (by the IHR). Despite the passage of time, and the
disclosure of new evidence, Morgenstern's basic thesis
remains unshaken.
A Growing Debate
The Revisionist case was firmly grounded in evidence made
available during the Congressional Hearings and in other post-
war disclosures. This did not silence the defenders of
Roosevelt and the "New World Order" that had been forged at
Teheran, Yalta, Potsdam, and San Francisco. Far from it. A
stream of books defending, "explaining" and excusing
Roosevelt and his chief aides rolled off the presses to the
accolades of the Establishment mass media. Representative
examples of this literature were The Road to Pearl Harbor, by
Herbert Feis (Princeton University Press, 1950); Roosevelt:
From Munich to Pearl Harbor by Basil Rauch (Creative Age
Press, 1950); and The Challenge to Isolation (Harper and
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
443
Brothers, 1952) and The Undeclared War (Harper and
Brothers, 1953), both by William L. Langer and S. Everett
Gleason.
If George Morgenstern's Pearl Harbor remained the best
answer to the Establishment's version of the attack, other
writers were taking a closer look at the New Deal and placing
the Japanese attack on Hawaii within the context of American
foreign and domestic policies during the Roosevelt Era. Of
especial note are studies by Charles A. Beard, President
Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appear-
ances and Realities (Yale University Press, 1948); William
Henry Chamberlin, America's Second Crusade (Henry
Regnery, 1950); Frederick R. Sanborn, Design for War: A Study
of Secret Power Politics, 1937-1941 (Devin Adair, 1951); and
Charles Callan Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt
Foreign Policy, 1933-1941 (Henry Regnery, 1952). The volumes
by Beard and Tansill were especially unwelcome among the
defenders of Roosevelt's policies, as Beard had been one of the
pre-eminent historians of the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury, while Tansill was a distinguished Georgetown Univers-
ity professor of American diplomatic history. All of the above-
mentioned titles are still worth reading, not only from the
historiographical standpoint, but also for their factual
disclosures and interpretations of events.
The Barnes Symposium
Harry Elmer Barnes (1889-1968) was a scholar of immense
range who had been a path-finder in World War I revisionism.
Later a critic of New Deal policies, he wrote on diplomatic
history and international relations and gave generous
encouragement to others to explore various aspects of recent
history. He saw this "quest for truth" as not a mere intellectual
exercise, but as an endeavor that might help bring justice and
peace to a troubled world.
In 1953, under Barnes's editorship, Perpetual War for
Perpetual Peace (The Caxton Printers, Ltd.) appeared. Here
Barnes assembled leading critics in a survey and appraisal of
the development, course, and consequences of American
foreign policy during Roosevelt's presidency. He was confi-
dent that the views expressed in this volume could withstand
whatever rejoinder Roosevelt's defenders might deliver,
observing:
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THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
There is no probability that later evidence will require any
moderation of the indictment of our foreign policy since 1914,
and, especially, since 1933. If there were any still secret
material which would brighten the record of the Roosevelt and
Truman foreign polices, we may rest assured that their court
historians and publicity agents would have revealed it to the
public long ere this.
The symposium opened with an introduction to "Revi-
sionism and the Historical Blackout," wherein Professor
Barnes explained how dissident views were suppressed by the
very elements which claimed to defend the First Amendment
to the Constitution. Had not the small firms Henry Regnery
and Devin-Adair been willing to publish Revisionist books, it
is doubtful whether Morgenstern, Sanborn, Tansill and others
would have managed to get their most significant work in
print. In his essay 'The United States and the Road to War in
Europe," Dr. Tansill discussed the European background of
the origins of World War II, as well as Japanese- American
relations up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Frederick R. San-
born considered the origins of Roosevelt's interventionism
and the failure of his un-neutral policies toward Hitler, in
"Roosevelt Is Frustrated In Europe." Professor William L.
Neumann drew attention to "How American Policy Toward
Japan Contributed to War in the Pacific."
Two essays dealt with Pearl Harbor and its aftermath: "The
Actual Road to Pearl Harbor," by George Morgenstern, which
summarized and updated the case he had made in his full-
length book, and "The Pearl Harbor Investigations," by Percy
L. Greaves, Jr. Greaves took a look at the nine Pearl Harbor in-
quiries and showed how blame had been redirected away
from the real culprits. He revealed how General Marshall was
forced to make a series of damaging admissions under sharp
questioning by Senator Homer Ferguson, among them how
the United States had secretly initiated military agreements
with the British and Dutch, directed against the Japanese, and
that the agreements had gone into effect before the Pearl Har-
bor attack. Nevertheless, the campaign to protect those who
were responsible for the Pearl Harbor debacle continued. As
he observed:
Those who have participated in this great conspiracy against
the American people undoubtedly believe that the end justifies
the means. They probably all join the editors of Life [magazine],
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
445
who tell us in their Picture History of World War II that "In
retrospect Pearl Harbor seemed clearly the best thing that
could have happened to the U.S."
William Henry Chamberlin reminded readers that none of
the stated goals that the United Nations were supposed to be
fighting for were realized by war's end. In his essay, "The
Bankruptcy of a Policy," he argued that the Roosevelt foreign
policy was a catastrophe, the dire consequences of which
would endure for decades to come. The final essay, by Pro-
fessor George A. Lundberg, considered "American Foreign
Policy in the Light of National Interest at Mid-Century." Here
he compared internationalism and interventionism with what
had been our traditional policy of continentalism before
America's involvement in the First World War. Under the old
policy, the United States had been safe and grew prosperous.
The New Internationalism had made us less free, less safe, less
secure.
Nearly forty years after they were first published, the
articles in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace have indeed
withstood the test of time and are still valuable historiography.
No one since Barnes has attempted, in a single volume, to
cover the history reviewed therein. Regrettably, it is unlikely
that such a project could be undertaken today, as there are not
enough scholars working on those topics to fill a large volume
of essays.
The Admirals Speak Up
Thanks to the Roosevelt apologists, including the biased
Roberts Commission, Majority Report of the Joint Congress-
ional Committee, and the pro-Administration books, it is no
wonder that the public was confused about which branch of
the service was responsible for the security of Pearl Harbor (a
condition that continues even today). The various investiga-
tions established that it was the Army, not the Navy, that was
charged with the defense of the Pacific Fleet when it was in
port Thus, the chain of command in 1941 went through the
Army Chief of Staff, General Marshall, to his commander at
Hawaii, Lt. Gen. Short. Admiral Kimmel was supposed to
cooperate with the Army, which at that time also included the
Air Force (which throughout World War II was actually the
Army Air Force). Kimmel's job was to take care of naval opera-
tions.
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THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Over the decades that the debate over Pearl Harbor has
raged, a number of observers have noted that, by and large, it
has been Navy men who have taken an interest in seeking the
truth about the attack. Gen. Short never published his own
memoirs. Nor have men close to Marshall given an "inside"
account of those fateful days.
Rear Admiral Robert A. Theobald was commander of the
Pacific Fleet's destroyers at the time of the attack and was at
Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Later he was commander
of the Northern Pacific Force. At the time of his retirement
from active duty he was Commandant of the First Naval
District.
Theobald assisted Kimmel in his testimony before the
Roberts Commission. After his retirement, he devoted years to
studying the attack and its aftermath. The results of his
research were first published in March 1954, when Devin-
Adair released The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor: The
Washington Contribution to the Japanese Attack.
It was Admiral Theobald's impression that from the fall of
France, in June 1940, Roosevelt was convinced that the U.S.
must fight on Britain's side and that the primary objective
remained the defeat of Germany. On September 27, 1940 Ger-
many, Italy, and Japan entered into the Tripartite Pact, which
provided that each would declare war on any third party that
went to war against one of the three (this did not affect Ger-
many and Japan's relations with the U.S.S.R.). From this date,
then, war with Japan meant war with Germany and Italy, and
this came to play an increasingly important role in Roosevelt's
maneuvers.
In an effort to circumvent the American public's reluctance
to enter the war, Roosevelt took a number of steps that
Theobald went into considerable detail explaining. In brief,
they were:
1) He introduced a massive arms buildup;
2) He repeatedly provoked Germany through an
undeclared naval war in the Atlantic;
3) He applied increasing economic and diplomatic pressure
on Japan, reaching a climax in late July, 1941, when the U.S.,
Britain, and the Netherlands froze Japanese assets. Japan lost
75 per cent of its foreign trade and 90 per cent of its oil supply;
4) In August 1941 he met with Churchill at Newfoundland,
where FDR promised that any Japanese attack on British or
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
447
Dutch possessions would bring the United States into the war;
5) He had Secretary of State Hull deliver an insulting
diplomatic ultimatum to the Japanese government on
November 26, 1941, "which gave Japan no choice but
surrender or war";
6) He "retained a weak Pacific fleet in Hawaiian waters,
despite contrary naval advice, where it served only one
diplomatic purpose, an invitation to a Japanese surprise
attack";
7) He "furthered that surprise by causing the Hawaiian
Commanders to be denied invaluable information from de-
coded Japanese dispatches concerning the rapid approach of
the war and the strong probability that the attack would be
directed at Pearl Harbor."
Theobald, in his review of the MAGIC diplomatic decrypts
that were available in Washington, emphasized that this vital
material was not passed along, and that there had been an
"almost complete denial of information, during the three
months preceding the Pearl Harbor attack." Then he posed a
series of questions that Roosevelt's defenders have yet to
answer satisfactorily: "Why was such irrefutable evidence of
the coming attack so withheld? Why did Washington con-
tribute so completely to the surprise feature of that attack?"
Theobald reasoned, 'There can be only one answer— because
President Roosevelt wanted it that way!"
The FinaJ Secret of Pearl Harbor included a review of the
findings of the various post-attack investigations, and offered
a point-by-point refutation of the Majority Conclusion of the
Joint Congressional Committee, which he dismissed as "the
last act in the attempt to preserve the Pearl Harbor Secret."
The American moves leading up to the Japanese attack are
summarized in his final chapter, in which Admiral Theobald
re- emphasizes that:
. . . the recurrent fact of the Pearl Harbor story has been the
repeated withholding of information from Admiral Kimmel
and General Short . . . The denial to the Hawaiian Comman-
ders of all knowledge of Magic was vital to the plan for enticing
Japan to deliver a surprise attack upon the Fleet . . . because as
late as Saturday, December 6, Admiral Kimmel could have
caused that attack to be canceled by taking his fleet to sea and
disappearing beyond land-based human ken.
Evidence placed on the record indicated to Theobald that:
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THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Everything that happened in Washington on Saturday and
Sunday, December 6 and 7, supports the belief that President
Roosevelt had directed that no message be sent to the Hawaiian
Commanders before noon on Sunday, Washington time . . .
Never before in recorded history had a field commander been
denied information that his country would be at war in a
matter of hours, and that everything pointed to a surprise at-
tack upon his forces shortly after sunrise.
Nevertheless, Theobald was forced to concede,
Roosevelt's strategy accomplished its purpose: a united
people rallied behind the president's war effort. The
author left it up to his readers to ponder the ethics of that
statecraft.
Contrary to the popular impression, Admiral Kimmel
and General Short were never formally charged with
errors of judgement or dereliction of duty. There was
never a court martial proceeding. Admiral Kimmel and
General Short were relieved of their commands and, in
early 1942, placed on the Retired list. Neither was afford-
ed an opportunity to defend himself against the
criticisms contained in the Roberts Commission Report.
However, during the 1944 Naval Court of Inquiry,
Kimmel was permitted to retain legal counsel (Charles B.
Rugg and Edward B. Hanify), to introduce testimony,
and cross-examine witnesses. It was during the course of
the Navy Inquiry that Kimmel learned about the MAGIC
intercepts that had not been passed along to him and
General Short. Thereafter, Kimmel tried to obtain as
much information as he could in order to set the record
straight. In December 1954, Henry Regnery Company of
Chicago published Admiral KimmeJ's Story.
Kimmel did not merely restate the findings of Morgenstern
and Theobald. He presented his readers with a fresh perspec-
tive on why the Pacific Fleet came to be based at Pearl Harbor
at the insistence of Roosevelt, and how he and General Short
had tried, for many months, to remedy the serious short-
comings of that facility. There were never enough aircraft
available to conduct 360-degree searches on a regular basis;
the base lacked radar sets and trained personnel; the entrance
to the anchorage was so narrow that warships were forced to
enter and exit in single file. KimmePs superiors repeatedly
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
449
advised him that there was no danger of torpedo attack,
because, they were confident, the harbor's waters were too
shallow and any airdropped "fish" would simply sink to the
bottom (the Japanese solved this problem by affixing special
fins to their torpedoes; U.S. Naval Ordnance did not think this
was possible).
As had been brought out during the Congressional Hear-
ings, and gone into detail in the studies by Morgenstern,
Greaves, Barnes, and Theobald, Kimmel and Short were kept
in the dark about the worsening diplomatic situation with
Japan and were denied all of the information contained in the
MAGIC decrypts. Kimmel went on to reveal that he was in-
formed by the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Stark, that
an attack against Pearl Harbor was not likely and was ordered
to have his fleet ready to move against the Marshall Islands
upon the outbreak of hostilities in the Pacific.
Immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack, angry citizens
bombarded Kimmel with denunciations and even death
threats. More than one politician publicly suggested that he
should consider suicide. A sample of this vilification was in-
cluded in the ninth chapter of his book.
Admiral Kimmel's Story makes for sobering reading, even to-
day. Reflecting on Kimmel's account, it is likely that most
readers will agree with Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey's
judgement that, "Admiral Kimmel and General Short [were]
splendid officers who were thrown to the wolves as scape-
goats for something over which they had no control. They had
to work with what they were given, both in equipment and in-
formation. They are our outstanding military martyrs."
Stimson's Embarrassing Diary Entry
On November 25, 1941, President Roosevelt met with
Secretary of Sate Hull, Navy Secretary Frank Knox, Secretary
of War Henry Stimson, General Marshall and Admiral Stark.
Relations with the Japanese was the main topic discussed.
FDR observed that the Japanese had launched surprise attacks
at the outset of previous wars and that the U.S. might be under
attack by the following Monday. Stimson was keeping a diary
at this time and the defenders of Roosevelt's innocence have
long been frustrated over the following entry from his diary,
dealing with the conference of the 25th:
"The question was how we should maneuver them [the
Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without
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THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult pro-
position."
After discussing the matter, Roosevelt and his closest ad-
visers agreed that:
In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese
fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full sup-
port of the American people it was desirable to make sure that
the Japanese were the ones to do this so that there should re-
main no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors.
Richard N. Current, a professor of history at the University
of North Carolina, came up with an inventive explanation for
this remarkable bit of evidence that was made public during
the Joint Congressional Hearings. In Secretary Stimson: A
Study in Statecraft (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
1954), Dr. Current conceded there was no denying that Stim-
son et al. were anticipating an attack. But, he claimed, not on
United States, rather on Dutch or British, territory. Roosevelt's
challenge was how to make a Japanese attack on Dutch or
British territory appear to be an attack on America. I leave it to
the reader to consider whether or not this is a convincing ex-
position.
Wohlstetter and Morison
Two books which remain standards in the pro-Roosevelt
literature appeared in 1963: Samuel Eliot Morison's The Two-
Ocean War (Boston: Little, Brown) and Roberta Wohlstetter's
Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decisions (Stanford: Stanford
University Press). Both were widely, and favorably, reviewed.
Morison's became a book club selection and best seller.
Wohlstetter's academic reputation as a specialist on in-
telligence analysis and strategic decision-making was secured
with the acceptance of her book.
Morison was hired by the Roosevelt Administration to write
the official History of United States Naval Operations in World
War II. The passage of time did little to mellow his dedication
to the cause of his war-time employer. Chapter 3 of The Two
Ocean War dealt with Pearl Harbor. Here, the author claimed,
that "Actually, the Administration and the heads of the armed
forces were doing their best to prevent or postpone a war with
Japan." The various MAGIC messages that Washington failed
to send word of to Hawaii simply got mixed up with other
warnings of forthcoming Japanese moves against Siberia,
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
451
Peru, and other unlikely places. Morison blamed Kimmel and
Short for not taking proper action, and went so far as to ac-
cuse them of "ignoring" an ambiguous "war warning" sent
from Washington on November 27th. In the end, Morison
chose to waffle, by claiming that, "Fundamentally, however, it
was the system, the setup both at Washington and at Pearl
Harbor, rather than individual stupidity or apathy, which muf-
fled and confused what was going on." Roosevelt, Stimson,
Hull, Marshall, and Stark did not have any blame affixed to
their reputations in this narrative.
Admiral Morison joined the chorus in describing Mrs.
Wohlstetter's Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, as "The best
book by far on the question of why we were surprised at Pearl
Harbor." More recently, Captain Roger Pineau and John
Costello (who should know better), have referred to her efforts
as a "scholarly study."
Wohlstetter was not interested in assigning blame for the
disaster. Rather, it was her thesis that "The United States was
not caught napping . . . We just expected wrong." Pearl Harbor
was "a failure of strategic analysis" and "a failure to anticipate
effectively." Yes, in retrospect, the record indicated that
Washington might well have warned Kimmel and Short. But
what we had here was a "national failure to anticipate" that the
Japanese would actually attack Hawaii, instead of some other
target. And no, there certainly wasn't any "conspiracy" involv-
ing Roosevelt and his cronies.
Percy L. Greaves who, by common agreement, knew more
about Pearl Harbor than any man living at the time, wrote a
scathing critique of Wohlstetter's book that should have led to
its being quietly removed from library shelves and consigned
to the recycling plants. 'The Mystery of Pearl Harbor: 25
Years of Deception," was included with essays by Harry Elmer
Barnes and Vice Admiral Frank Betty in the December 12,
1966 issue of National Review magazine. Later reprinted in the
special "Pearl Harbor: Revisionism Renewed" edition of The
JournaJ of Historical Review (Volume Four, Number Four,
Winter 1983-84), Greaves noted that a first reading of her book
disclosed over one hundred factual errors, "not to mention
child-like acceptance of Administration releases in preference
to obscured realities." One fundamental error of assumption
undermined her entire argument. Treating the intelligence
phase of the story, she never learned that there was a five-hour
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THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
difference between Navy time and Washington, D.C. time. As
Greaves remarked, "How valuable is a book on pre-attack in-
telligence that is five hours off on the timing of all Naval com-
munications coming out of Washington? How dependable is a
Naval historian who acclaims such a book the best on the sub-
ject? . . . One could go on and on for a hundred more blunders.
The facts were just too much for Mrs. Wohlstetter." It says
volumes about the quality of the current generation of
academic historians that Wohlstetter's book continues to turn
up on lists of "recommended" titles dealing with the Pearl Har-
bor catastrophe.
Further Contributions by Barnes
Harry Elmer Barnes continued to investigate the attack on
Pearl Harbor long after the publication of Perpetual War For
Perpetual Peace. He not only conducted his own research, but
gave warm encouragement to others, both people who had
some "inside" knowledge of the events, as well as unbiased
scholars who were not afraid to pursue avenues of inquiry that
might lead to findings that were unpopular with the political
and historical establishments.
The twenty-fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbor was marked at
the Chicago Tribune with a Special Pearl Harbor Supplement.
George Morgenstern organized this undertaking with assis-
tance from Dr. Barnes. The highlight of the December 7, 1966
Chicago Tribune was an essay by Admiral Kimmel. Barnes
contributed an insightful piece on General Marshall.
Commander Charles Hiles wrote the best article yet to be
published concerning the "Bomb Plot" Messages. Tokyo re-
quested specific information about the movement and loca-
tion of major warships berthed at Pearl Harbor. On December
3, the Japanese consul in Honolulu, Nagao Kita, informed
Tokyo that he had set up a system of codes confirming the
movement of various American warships through the use of
signals in windows at Lanikai Beach, which could be spotted
by off-shore "fishing" boats and submarines. This vital infor-
mation could then be passed on to the Japanese carrier task
force. The signal system would operate through December
6th. The Kita messages to Tokyo were intercepted and
decrypted by U.S. intelligence. Thus, Washington knew that
Pearl Harbor was likely going to be attacked and by what date.
None of this information was passed along to the U.S. Army
and Navy commanders at Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
453
Articles by the Tribune's veteran Washington Bureau Chief,
Walter Trohan, and their aviation editor, Wayne Thomis,
rounded out this issue.
The following year, on December 7, 1967, Morgenstern
gave front-page coverage in the Tribune to the publication of a
number of documents relating to Pearl Harbor, with commen-
tary by Barnes. Although this information was well known to
those who had kept up with the debate over the years,
members of the public at large found much of the material that
Barnes collected shocking, and revealing a chapter of history
they were ignorant of.
Harry Elmer Barnes died on August 25, 1968 at the age of
79. Less than a week before he passed away, he had completed
the final draft of Pearl Harbor After a Quarter of a Century, a
132-page summary of the entire controversy. This incisive
study originally appeared in print as an entire issue of Left and
Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought (Volume IV, 1968). It
has since been reprinted in its entirety by the Institute for
Historical Review.
He observed that all of the careful research conducted by
Revisionists had yet to alter the general public perception of
this event:
Only a small fraction of the American people are any better
acquainted with the realities of the responsibility for the attack
than they were when President Roosevelt delivered his "Day of
Infamy" oration on December 8, 1941. The legends and
rhetoric of that day still dominate the American mind.
For the last time, Barnes outlined what he felt were the
policies and events which had led to the attack on Pearl Har-
bor. Over the years, Barnes had revised a number of his own
assumptions. One of these concerned Roosevelt's December 1,
1941 order to Admiral Hart at Manila, ordering the immediate
dispatch of three "small vessels" armed with a machine gun
and deck cannon, each commanded by a U.S. Naval officer,
and flying the American flag. The three little ships were
directed to sail into the path of Japanese Navy convoys that
Washington knew were then steaming southward. Had the
American ships been attacked by the Japanese, Barnes was
now confident that this would have saved Pearl Harbor.
"There can be little doubt that the Cockleship plan of
December 1st was designed to get the indispensable attack by
a method which would precede the Pearl Harbor attack, avert
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THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
the latter, and save the Pacific Fleet and American lives," he
wrote of this aspect of the mystery.
A part of the story that had hitherto been largely over-
looked, even by many Revisionists, concerned the secret
agreements Roosevelt had entered into with the British and
Dutch and which led to America technically being at war with
Japan four days before Pearl Harbor. As Barnes succinctly ex-
plained, in April 1941 the U.S., British, and Dutch agreed to
take joint military action against Japan if the Japanese sent
armed forces beyond the line 100° East and 10° North or 6°
North and the Davao-Waigeo line, or threatened British or
Dutch possessions in the southwest Pacific or independent
countries in that region. The agreements were known as
ABCD. Thereafter, Admiral Stark said that war with Japan
was not a matter of if, but rather when and where. Roosevelt
gave his approval to the attendant war plans in May and June.
On December 3, 1941, the Dutch invoked the ABCD agree-
ment, after Japanese forces passed the line 100° East and 10°
North, and were thought to be headed toward Dutch territory
as well as the Kra Peninsula and Thailand. The U.S. military
attache in Melbourne, Australia, Colonel Van S. Merle-Smith,
was contacted by the Australians, British, and Dutch and in-
formed that the Dutch were expecting the U.S. Navy to offer
assistance. Merle-Smith relayed this information to his
superiors by coded message. It should have reached
Washington in the early evening of December 4.
Like a number of other students of the period, Barnes
suspected that FDR had sought a "good war" to solve the
serious economic problems that persisted throughout the New
Deal. Whatever his motives, it was undeniable, he concluded,
that:
The overwhelming responsibility for the war and the attack
was, of course, Roosevelfs deliberate refusal to settle the rela-
tions between the United States and Japan in a peaceful man-
ner by honest diplomatic negotiations, to achieve which Japan
made unusually impressive gestures and offered very
reasonable terms that protected all legitimate vital American
interests in the Far East.
Pearl Harbor After a Quarter of a Century remains a note-
worthy contribution to the literature on the topic. It is as good
an introduction to the issues involved as is currently in print.
Pear] Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
455
Additional Pieces of the Puzzle
In the October 1962 issue of the United States Naval In-
stitute Proceedings, Rear Admiral Kemp Tolley gave his ac-
count of having been the commander of one of the "little ships"
hastily ordered out of Manila to monitor the Japanese Navy in
early December of 1941. Although the bare essentials of the in-
cident had been revealed during the Joint Congressional Hear-
ings, Tolley's article sparked much comment. Additional
research resulted in the publication of his book, The Cruise of
the Lanikai: Incitement to War (Annapolis: Naval Institute
Press, 1973).
The Lanikai was a 67-ton two-masted auxiliary schooner
engaged in inter-island traffic. Chartered for $1.00 by the U.S.
Navy, it had a crew of five Filipino civilians, who could not
speak English. Commander Harry Slocum informed a startled
Lt. Tolley that 'the President has personally ordered" him to
set sail as soon as possible. The sailing ship was turned into a
vessel of war by lashing to its deck an old 3-pounder gun left
over from the Spanish-American War and two World-War
I-vintage .30 caliber machine guns. The only radio available
could receive messages but not transmit them. Nevertheless,
he was ordered to set sail for the coast of Indo-China and told
to have someone work on the radio set while they were at sea.
In the event, neither the Lanikai, nor the other ships ordered
out, the Isabel and the Molly Moore, were able to cross the
paths of the Japanese. Only after the war did Tolley fully ap-
preciate the role intended for the Lanikai— that of "live bait."
Another book on this topic was Cover Up: The Politics of
Pearl Harbor, 1941-1946 by Bruce Bartlett (New Rochelle,
N.Y.: Arlington House, 1978). The core of this volume was
taken from his 1976 Georgetown University masters thesis in
history, which explored what various interest groups hoped to
gain from an inquiry into Pearl Harbor. It offers little to the
student of the episode that cannot be found in other, and bet-
ter, treatments. Its chief interest today is that it includes, as an
appendix, a reproduction of John T. Flynn's pathbreaking
pamphlet, The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor, discussed earlier
in this essay.
The Strange Case of Gordon Prange
Gordon W. Prange served as Chief of General Douglas
MacArthur's G-2 Historical Section in Japan from October
456
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
1946-July 1951. During that time he conducted numerous in-
terrogations of Japanese military personnel. Upon completion
of his stint in Asia, he returned to the United States, where he
taught history at the University of Maryland until his death in
May of 1980.
Prange obtained an advance (reputed to amount of $25,000)
for a book on Pearl Harbor. For whatever reasons, he never
turned in a completed manuscript, but kept on doing research
for thirty-seven years. Upon his death, two former students of
his, Donald Goldstein, an associate professor of Public and In-
ternational Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, and
Katherine V. Dillon, a former intelligence analyst, revised his
3500-page draft. Over the following eight years, four books at-
tributed to Gordon Prange rolled off the presses and onto the
"new releases" lists of the Book of the Month Club, History
Book Club, and other distributors of "safe" popular history. To
the surprise of McGraw-Hill, Goldstein and Dillon managed to
turn Prange Enterprises, as the copyright holder was called,
into a paying proposition.
The first book attributed to Prange was At Dawn We Slept:
The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1981). It is a military history of the attack as seen from the
Japanese and American perspectives. It only touched on the
larger issues of Japanese-American foreign relations, which
have always served as the backdrop for Revisionist treatments
of this topic. Prange had long felt that, "in the context of the
time," a war between the United States and Japan was "virtual-
ly inevitable."
In truth, about the only genuinely "untold" aspect of this
story was that Prange had failed to get his book ready in the
early 1950s, when it would have been "new." Shortly before At
Dawn We Slept was at long last on its way to the printers, the
Carter Administration released a mountain of previously
classified U.S. naval records to the National Archives.
Prange's literary heirs did not have the time to sift through this
massive volume of new material. However, this did not stop
them from adding, as an appendix, an essay entitled, "Revi-
sionists Revisited," in which they made the astounding claim
to have made a thorough search "including all publications
released up to May 1, 1981." While allowing that "the Presi-
dent made his mistakes in 1941, as did almost everyone else
involved in Pearl Harbor," they went on to make the menda-
Pear] Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
457
cious assertion that, "we have not discovered one word of
sworn testimony that substantiates the revisionist position on
Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor."
Among the many records that Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon
did not consult was the remarkable testimony of former Chief
Warrant Officer Ralph T. Briggs, who was working at the
Cheltenham, Maryland intercept station in late 1941. Contrary
to the defenders of Roosevelt and his coterie, who during the
various investigations swore that there had been no "East
Wind Rain" message received prior to the attack, Briggs con-
firmed that he had intercepted the 'Winds" execute and had
even located a Navy memoir buried in the records, indicating
that he had read the message as early as December 2, 1941.
During the later investigations, Captain Laurence Safford was
the only person directly concerned with this matter who had
the courage to testify that there had indeed been a "winds"
message forwarded to Washington before the attack. It was
Safford who first alerted Admiral Kimmel to the existence of
these messages. During the Congressional Hearings, Briggs
was ordered by his superiors not to testify and not to have
anything further to do with Safford. Briggs's damning
evidence was released by the National Archives on March 11,
1980 as document SRH-051: "Interview with Mr. Ralph T.
Briggs," which was an official transcript of remarks made to
the Naval Security Group. Long before At Dawn We Slept had
gone to the printers, the Briggs testimony was freely available
at the Military Reference Branch of the National Archives and
copies immediately began to circulate among serious students
of the affair. It was reprinted, in full, in the Fall 1980 issue of
the Newsletter of the American Committee on the History of
the Second World War, which is an affiliate of the American
Historical Association.
Prange and Company also failed to exploit new documenta-
tion available from General Marshall's declassified files, which
suggested that Kimmel and Short had in truth been made
scapegoats for Washington. Nor did they refer to other
records found among the Army Chief of Staff reports,
documenting General Mac Arthur's blundering during the
Philippine campaign.
Those wishing more details about the manifold shortcom-
ings of At Dawn We Slept should consult Percy L. Greaves, Jr.,
"Three Assessments of the Infamy of December 7, 1941," The
458
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Journal of Historical Review (Volume Three, Number Three,
Fall, 1982) and Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton, Captain Roger
Pineau, and John Costello, "And I Was There": Pearl Harbor
and Midway— Breaking the Secrets (New York: William Mor-
row, 1985), pp. 495-511. As Greaves trenchantly observed in
The JHR, "it would take another book of 800 pages to balance,
correct and refute the one-sided presentation of the book's
selected 'facts' and deductions." Pineau and Costello show in
their own examination of this book:
Although widely praised for its apparently exhaustive
research, Prange's account did nothing to provide new
understanding of what had really gone wrong in Washington.
At Dawn We Slept merely served to reinforce the politically
loaded thirty-five-year-old report produced by the (Democratic
majority of) the congressional investigating committee.
At Dawn We Slept is still very much in print and has just
been re-released in a Pearl Harbor "50th Anniversary Edition"
available in hardcover from Viking for $35.00 and in paper-
back from Penguin for $16.95. For unwary students and the
general public, this is the version of the story that is most com-
patible with the world view of our predominant political and
historiographical regime.
John Costello's Cautious Revisionism
John Costello, a former BBC producer turned historian, had
co-authored two successful books, D-Day and The Battle of the
Atlantic, before turning his attention to the Pacific campaigns.
Costello's manuscript was near completion when the National
Archives received the vast collection of Navy files in 1980. He
was able to incorporate some of the new material in The
Pacific War (New York: Rawson Wade, 1981), which appeared
almost simultaneously with At Dawn We Slept. His treatment
reflects his basically pro-Churchill, British bias, and the first
hardcover edition was marred by sloppy proofreading and
careless editing. Still, it was a more honest effort than the
Prange work and, in two final chapters, Costello considered
some of the newly released material that, among other things,
indicated that eleven days before Pearl Harbor Roosevelt
received a "positive war warning" from Churchill that the
Japanese would attack the United States at the end of the first
week of December. He also referred to John T. Briggs's impor-
tant disclosures. Wrote Costello about the war:
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
459
There is every indication that a month before the attack on
Pearl Harbor, it was the United States that had decided to bring
about the rupture of discussions and was about to prepare for
the worst. There is now evidence for believing that President
Roosevelt was not only expecting war but possibly knew exact-
ly when it would break out.
According to a confidential British Foreign Office report "the
President and Mr. Hull were . . . fully conscious of what they
were doing". . . Whether such an accommodation [the modus
vivendi] would have worked out in practice is less important
than the fact that it was the United States which decided to
abandon the modus vivendi— thereby making a Pacific War in-
evitable ... In the light of subsequent events, this decision
proved to have been one of the most momentous in American
history.
The Evolution of John Toland
John Toland has been one of the most commercially suc-
cessful writers of popular history over the past thirty years.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for But Not in Shame (1961), he
said that the Pacific war was caused by an unprovoked act of
Japanese aggression. His 1970 book, The Rising Sun, reported
that Pearl Harbor had been the consequence of both American
and Japanese miscalculations and mistakes. However, Toland
continued to explore the question of how America and Japan
came to go to war. His revised view of these events was
published in 1982 and created an immediate sensation. In-
famy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath (New York: Doubleday)
witnessed Toland's conversion to the Revisionist position. It
was now beyond question, wrote Toland, that Roosevelt and
his closest advisers, including Marshall and Stimson, knew
about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor before December
7th, but had withheld this information from Kimmel and
Short. After the Japanese delivered their "surprise" first-strike,
the Roosevelt Administration launched a massive "cover up,"
that involved the suppressing or destroying of evidence, per-
jury, and making the Army and Navy commanders at Hawaii
scapegoats. These were conclusions that Morgenstern,
Barnes, et al., had reached over thirty years earlier.
What distinguished Infamy was that Toland managed to un-
cover additional information which lent further weight to the
Revisionist case. The focus of his book was the nine post-
attack investigations. This is by far the most readable account
of the efforts made by various individuals, including Kimmel,
460
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Safford, Greaves and the Republican Minority on the Joint
Congressional Committee, to overcome the official roadblocks
and obtain the truth about what led to the attack on Pearl Har-
bor.
Toland went on to reveal that his own "tenth investigation"
had uncovered evidence suggesting that the Dutch had passed
on information to Washington about the forthcoming attack
and that the Office of Naval Intelligence was also aware that a
Japanese carrier task force was steaming toward Hawaii. The
edition of Infamy one should consult is not the first hardcover
printing, but rather the revised 1983 version, which includes
an important Postscript incorporating material not available
for the first printing. This recommended edition is currently
in print: Infamy by John Toland (New York: Berkley Books,
397 pp., $5.50, ISBN: 0- 425-09040-X). This represents an im-
portant breakthrough for Revisionism, since Toland's was the
first Revisionist treatment of Pearl Harbor to be published by a
major commercial house and the first to reach the New York
Times bestseller list. Writing in the JHR, Percy L. Greaves
described Infamy as "probably the best volume on the subject
to date."
Contributions by Martin and Greaves
For many years, this reviewer distributed copies to students
of what he has long considered to be the best brief introduc-
tion to this question, James J. Martin's essay, "Pearl Harbor:
Antecedents, Background and Consequences." First published
as a chapter in his 1977 book, The Saga of Hog Island fr Other
Essays in Inconvenient History (Ralph Myles, Publisher, P.O.
Box 1533, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80901), it was later in-
cluded as a chapter in a volume directed especially toward a
Japanese audience, Beyond Pearl Harbor: Essays on Some
Historical Consequences of the Crisis in the Pacific in 1941
(Plowshare Press, RR 1, Little Current, Ontario POP 1KO,
Canada, 1981). Within the confines of seventeen pages, Dr.
Martin manages to explain why Pearl Harbor has continued to
be an issue provoking controversy, reviews the most impor-
tant literature, and discusses what some of the results have
been for the United States.
Beyond Pearl Harbor included a previously unpublished
essay by Martin, 'Where Was the General? Some New Views
and Contributions Relative to the Ongoing Mystery of Pearl
Harbor." Marshall's role in this affair has long been a question.
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
461
As Chief of Staff, Marshall was responsible for reviewing the
defense of Pearl Harbor. He had access to the MAGIC inter-
cepts that were not passed along to General Short. He was at
Roosevelt's side through the critical months preceding the out-
break of the war. And he managed to disappear from the late
afternoon of December 6th, when Washington started to
receive decrypts of the Japanese diplomatic messages, inform-
ing its ambassadors that the break was coming with the
United States, until late on the morning of December 7th.
During the various investigations, Marshall claimed that "he
couldn't recall" where he was on that fateful date. Martin was
able to incorporate the sensational John T. Briggs testimony in
his discussion. [The best guess is that Marshall was hiding out
at the White House.] "Where Was General Marshall?" was first
made available to American readers when it was included in
the special Pearl Harbor issue of The JHR (Volume four,
Number Four, Winter 1983-84). At the time of his death in
1984, Percy L. Greaves, Jr. had long been at work on a book on
Pearl Harbor. Tentatively titled, The Real Infamy of Pearl Har-
bor, it has never been published. Four chapters of his draft
were published, with his permission, as part of The JHR Pearl
Harbor special issue. Two of these chapters dealt with General
Marshall and his efforts to obscure what Roosevelt and the
rest of them knew about the attack. A chapter on the MAGIC
intercepts explained why it was impossible to assert that
Roosevelt was "surprised" by the outbreak of the war. This
issue of the JHR also reprinted Greaves's article, "Was Pearl
Harbor Unavoidable?," which showed how, over a period of
years, the Roosevelt Administration missed opportunities to
reach a peaceful settlement to Pacific questions plaguing
Japanese-American relations. "The Mystery of Pearl Harbor,"
was taken from National Review of December 12, 1966, and
contains his critique of Roberta Wohlstetter's Pearl Harbor;
Warning and Decision. The last essay by Greaves, "What We
Knew," reviews the information available in Washington by
the time of the December 7th attack.
Admiral Layton's Memoirs
On December 7, 1941, Edwin T. Layton was intelligence of-
ficer for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, an assignment he retained
throughout the war. Like his superior, Admiral Kimmel, he
was indeed surprised when the Japanese bombers hit the base.
But he was not cashiered in the aftermath.
462
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Following his retirement in 1962, Layton was encouraged
by many people, in and out of the military, to write his own ac-
count of what had happened. Over the following years, Rear
Admiral Layton collected material and wrote articles and
reviews for the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. The publica-
tion of At Dawn We SJept provoked him to complete the work
he had begun almost twenty years earlier. He found the book
riddled with misstatements and distortions of fact, and was
outraged that Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon had blamed Kim-
mel and Short for the disaster, while absolving Washington.
At the time he suffered a fatal stroke in April 1984, Layton
had largely completed the first draft of his manuscript, which
recounted his version of events up to the Battle of Midway.
Captain Roger Pineau, who had assisted Samuel Eliot
Morison with his multi-volume History of United States Naval
Operations in World War II, and John Costello both knew
Layton, and were retained to complete his book, which ap-
peared in 1985 as "And I Was There": Pearl Harbor and Mid-
way—Breaking the Secrets (New York: William Morrow, 596
pp., ISBN: 0-688-04883-8).
Naturally, the question arises as to just how much of this is
really Layton and how much may have been "edited" by
Pineau and Costello. As David Irving reminds us, the publ-
ished versions of many "memoirs" often differ greatly from the
original manuscripts. With that reservation in mind, this
reviewer can report that Layton's central thesis is that he and
Kimmel were "short changed" of intelligence information by
Washington. He confirms that Admiral Richmond Kelly
Turner, Chief of the War Plans Division, failed to relay vital in-
telligence to Kimmel:
It should now be indisputable that the information that might
have averted the disaster had been received by the Navy
Department by 6 December 1941 ... the bomb plot message, or
even the eleventh-hour "lights code" message, could have
alerted Pearl Harbor to the threat.
Layton thus reconfirms what Kimmel and Theobald wrote
in their accounts. Other insights found in this volume include
evidence that Stalin had very precise knowledge about when
the Japanese were going to launch their strikes, and another
report confirming that a council-of-war convened at the White
House the night of December 6th.
Pear] Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
463
Some Recent Scholarship
The war between Japan and the United States continues to
be studied by academic historians. A book that includes eigh-
teen essays by American and Japanese scholars is Pearl Har-
bor Reexamined: Prologue to the Pacific War, edited by Hilary
Conroy and Harry Wray (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 200 pp., 1990, $22.00, ISBN: 0-8248-1235-2). Japanese
and American diplomacy leading up to the attack is reexamin-
ed here, with a number of the contributors disputing the still
popular notion that "war was inevitable."
The symposium opens with a review of Japanese-American
relations from 1900 to 1940 by Harry Wray, a former history
professor at Illinois State, now on the faculty of the University
of Tsukuba, Japan. Akira Iriye then looks at U.S. policy toward
Japan before World War II. He makes the case that the
Japanese were very reluctant to make a drive to the south and
were not necessarily antagonistic to the United States. The
Roosevelt Administration, he argues, lost many opportunities
to reach a peaceful resolution of outstanding issues. In his
essay "Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New Deal, and Japan,"
Gary Dean Best, of the University of Hawaii, argues that FDR
ignored the counsel of his more knowledgeable advisers, and
followed his own notions, influenced by his "ancestral connec-
tions" to the China trade. Hull was a "mediocrity" who "knew
nothing about foreign affairs." Roosevelt sabotaged the World
Economic Conference. The New Deal was a "war waged
against business and banking in the United States ... By 1938
almost every industrialized nation in the world was well
ahead of the United States in recovering from the depression,
some of them having surpassed their pre-depression economic
levels." Like Barnes and other earlier Revisionists, Prof. Best is
convinced that:
The events of December 7, 1941, resulted in part from the at-
titudes and policies that began to direct the United States in
1933. A new President launched the United States on mistaken
foreign and domestic policies that ended in the prolonging of
the depression and in war, rather than in recovery and peace.
The late John K. Emmerson, a one-time U.S. Foreign Service
officer assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo during Joseph
Grew's ambassadorship and later a senior scholar at Stanford,
points out that Grew and others familiar with Japan were not
listened to. The State Department's favorite "expert," Stanley
464
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Hornbeck, had little genuine knowledge; his "only experience
is Asia had been a teaching stint in China." It was Hornbeck
who helped torpedo a proposed Pacific summit between
Roosevelt and Prime Minister Konoye.
Ikei Masaru of Keio University and author of Gaisetsu Nihon
Gaikoshi (A Survey of Japanese Diplomatic History), highlights
"Examples of Mismanagement in U.S. Policy toward Japan
before World War II." He argues that a more cautious attitude
on the part of Washington might have postponed or avoided
war with Japan altogether. American hard-liners, such as
Hornbeck, misread Japanese intentions and did not under-
stand the psychology of the officer corps, who would not ac-
cept submission, writes Hosoya Chihiro, vice-president of the
International University of Japan.
Tsunoda Jun, former professor of history at Kokushin
University and editor of the eight-volume Taiheiyo no senso e
no michi (The Road to the Pacific War) considers the Hull-
Nomura negotiations. He considers that "there was no signifi-
cant issue that would have made a war between Japan and the
United States inevitable." Konoye's bid to hold a summit
meeting with Roosevelt was completely genuine and was
worth attempting.
Not all of the contributors to this volume support Revisionist
positions. Michael Barnhart, associate professor of Japanese
history at the State University of New York at Stony Brook,
contends that Hornbeck was a realist and the United States
was better off for having followed his advice. Alvin D. Coox,
chair of the Japanese Studies Institute at San Diego State
University, writes on "Repulsing the Pearl Harbor Revi-
sionists: The State of Present Literature on the Debacle." He
reveals his own lack of qualifications to make an informed
judgement when he avers that "the late Professor Gordon W.
Prange demolished the supposed deviltry of Roosevelt and
company in his book, appropriately titled At Dawn We Slept."
For many readers, PearJ Harbor Reexamined will be their
first exposure to contemporary Japanese historical analysis.
Three of the American contributors to this volume share the
view that Roosevelt and Hull were not very interested in
Japanese peace overtures. More books of the quality of this
collection of essays would make a welcome addition to the
literature of other hotly debated topics.
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
465
The Role of Winston Churchill
Students of the Second World War are well aware that
Roosevelt and Churchill were working together long before
the United States was officially at war against the Axis. The
Tyler Kent affair has shed light on the secret communications
the two engaged in, even before Churchill was Prime Mini-
ster. British wartime Cabinet papers released in January 1972
disclosed that at the August 1941 Newfoundland, Canada
meeting, where the "Atlantic Charter" was announced,
Roosevelt promised Churchill that the U.S. would enter the
war by the end of the year.
Questions have persisted: Did Churchill know about the
Japanese design against Pearl Harbor? Did he pass along what
information he had to Roosevelt?
At the Ninth International Revisionist Conference, British
historian David Irving dealt with these and related matters in
his paper, "Churchill and U.S. Entry into World War II,"
which was subsequently published in The JHR, Volume Nine,
Number Three, Fall 1989, pp. 261-286. While working on the
second volume of his wartime biography of Churchill, Irving
reported that he discovered that all British intelligence files
relating to Japan during the fall of 1941 have been removed
from the archives and are closed to review by researchers. His
fellow British historian, John Costello, was told by the British
Ministry of Defence that it is "not in the national interest" to
have these files made available to the public.
In his remarks, Irving pointed out that from September 1939
the British were able to read the Japanese fleet operational
code, known as JN-25 (Japanese Navy). He went on to reveal
that by mid-November of 1941, Churchill knew that the
United States was soon to be attacked by the Japanese and that
he "probably knew" that an attack would fall at Pearl Harbor.
Said Irving, "I think Churchill deliberately allowed the attack
on Pearl Harbor to go ahead in order to bring the Americans
in. He did everything to avoid having the Pacific Fleet
warned."
This thesis has been developed by James Rusbridger and
Eric Nave in their newly released book, Betrayal at Pearl Har-
bor: How Churchill Lured Roosevelt into WW II (New York:
Summit Books, Simon & Schuster, 302 pp., photographs, in-
dex, 1991, $19.95. ISBN: 0-671-70805-8). Rusbridger, formerly
with Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, has written on in-
466
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
telligence and military history since his retirement. While do-
ing work on a book dealing with signals intelligence, he en-
countered Captain Eric Nave, "the father of British codebreak-
ing in the Far East." The two then collaborated to produce this
volume, which discloses that the British, and very likely the
Americans, too, were indeed reading the Japanese Navy
operational code well before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
By their account, the British certainly knew that the
Japanese fleet was going to set sail on November 26, 1941. The
most likely targets were the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies,
Singapore, or Pearl Harbor. When the Japanese were not
sighted in the south, this was, by process of elimination, a fur-
ther indication that they were sending units towards Pearl
Harbor. On December 2, five days before the attack on
Hawaii, the British intercepted Admiral Yamamoto's signal,
"Climb Niitakayama 1208," meaning that an attack would com-
mence on December 8, Tokyo time, which was December 7 in
Hawaii.
They charge that Churchill must have known that Pearl Har-
bor was going to be attacked, but that he refused to pass his in-
formation to Roosevelt. Had FDR known about the impending
Japanese first-strike, then "as a totally honorable President," he
would have warned Kimmel and Short at Pearl Harbor. They
conclude their narrative:
Roosevelt was thus deceived by Churchill, who took a ghast-
ly gamble to bring America into the war in a manner that
would sweep aside all opposition; and he was also badly served
by his own divided and jealous subordinates. The combination
of the two brought a reluctant ally into the war. Churchill's
gamble paid off even if, in the process, Britain lost an empire.
Anyone familiar with the Roosevelt record can see the flaw
in their conclusion, even if they are correct that the JN-25 code
had been broken by the early fall of 1939. The authors com-
pletely misread Roosevelt's position. They make no mention of
his commitments to the British and Dutch, and the dilemma
he was placed in when the Dutch called on the U.S. to own up
to its part of the bargain four days before the attack on Pearl
Harbor. There is no reference to Roosevelt's "live bait" ploy of
sending three little ships out of manila on a "defensive infor-
mation patrol" the week before Pearl Harbor. Greaves, and
others, long ago argued that while FDR may not have welcom-
ed the loss of life at Pearl Harbor, that after the failure of his
Pearl Harbor: Fifty Years of Controversy
467
"three little ships" gambit, and with the Dutch and British in-
voking their agreements that went into went effect after the
Japanese crossed the imaginary line in Southeast Asia, the at-
tack on Pearl Harbor solved Roosevelt's most pressing pro-
blem.
Rusbridger and Nave have undoubtedly uncovered addi-
tional parts of the mystery. With the reservations I have out-
lined, their book is of interest to students of this episode.
Revisionism and Pearl Harbor
Over the past half-century, Pearl Harbor Revisionism has
come of age. From the first writings of John T. Flynn, to
George Morgenstern's masterful study, to the work encour-
aged by Harry Elmer Barnes, the testimony of participants in
the events, and the latest findings of "second-generation"
historians who are not satisfied merely to retell the standard
accounts, this endeavor to uncover the truth has not been
marked by paranoid "conspiracy theories" or reactionary
"Roosevelt baiting." What Revisionists have accomplished is a
sober re-appraisal of the origins of the Pacific War, and the
making of a strong case for remembering December 7, 1941 as
President Roosevelt's "Day of Infamy."
468
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
[continued from page 430)
let us know if you believe this letter to a newspaper editor
should be published in pamphlet form.
Last and not least, Mark Weber reports on the little-known
facts of the FDR-approved plan for American bombing attacks
on Japan— from China in American planes flown by American
pilots (disguised as Chinese planes piloted by American
"volunteers")- months before Pearl Harbor! Readers who
watched ABC's recent "20/20" episode dealing with Plan
JB-355 will marvel at the network's inability to integrate the
documentary evidence for this plan— available at the National
Archives for two decades, although ignored until very recently
by historians -with the background to FDR's "back door to
war" as revealed over the past 50 years by Revisionist
historians.
-Theodore J. O'Keefe
BOOK REVIEWS
In-Depth Report of "Holocaust Trial"
Provides Valuable Overview
THE HOLOCAUST ON TRIAL: The Case of Ernst Ziindel
by Robert Lenski. Decatur, Ala.: The Reporter Press, 1990.
Paperback. 544 pages. Photographs. Index. ISBN:
0-9623220-0-8. (Available from the IHR for $29.00, plus
$2.00 postage and handling.)
Reviewed by Mark Weber
Anyone with an interest in twentieth-century history or
who truly cares about the issue of free speech in a
democratic society will appreciate this book. Written as a day-
by-day account of the 1988 "Holocaust Trial" in Toronto of
German-Canadian publisher Ernst Ziindel, and illustrated
with dozens of well-chosen photographs, this highly readable,
balanced and yet comprehensive survey may well be the best
single introduction to the Holocaust issue now available.
Ziindel's troubles began in November 1983 when Jewish
community activist Sabina Citron filed a complaint against
him for reprinting and distributing Did Six Million Really Die?,
a polemical booklet by British writer Richard Harwood (Ver-
rall) that refutes the generally accepted Holocaust extermina-
tion story. Responding to complaints from Canada's Jewish
community, it wasn't long before Ontario's provincial govern-
ment took over the case, and in early 1985 Ziindel was brought
to court for "knowingly spreading false news."
He was found guilty after a highly emotional seven-week
trial that attracted enormous media attention in Canada. After
the verdict was set aside by a higher court, Ziindel was tried
again in 1988 on the same charge, and was again found guilty.
The verdict is currently under review by Canada's Supreme
Court.
For his part, Ziindel could have made things much
easier— or at least simpler— for himself if he had chosen to de-
fend himself on narrower legal grounds. He might, for exam-
ple, have simply argued that he was entitled to publish the
470
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
booklet under Canada's supposedly guaranteed right of free
speech. But Ziindel was determined at the outset, as he put it,
to "put the Nuremberg Trial on trial," and decisively discredit
the Holocaust extermination story.
The German-born defendant never intended to devote
several years and enormous effort to the Holocaust issue. A
passionate German nationalist, Ziindel has regarded these
Holocaust trials as an unintended but unfortunately necessary
detour from what he sees as his mission: restoring a sense of
purpose, pride and confidence to his beloved German people.
In spite of the guilty verdicts, it is now obvious that govern-
ment officials and Jewish community leaders badly
miscalculated when they decided to go after Ziindel
because— as Lenski's book makes abundantly clear— Holocaust
Revisionism has been immeasurably strengthened as a result
of these trials. Apparently viewing him as little more than a
bigoted simpleton, his adversaries grossly underestimated
Ziindel's intelligence, skill and perseverance, and did not an-
ticipate his ability to assemble and hold together a team of
loyal and talented supporters.
Much of the credit for the effectiveness of ZundePs legal
campaign must go to his courageous attorney, Doug Christie.
In his tough and often brilliant cross-examination of prosecu-
tion witnesses in the 1985 trial, he obliged many of them to
make revealing and sometimes incriminating concessions to
truth. This highly intelligent, sensitive and idealistic man con-
tinued his work in the 1988 trial, ably assisted by Keltie Zubko
and attorney Barbara Kulaszka. (Audio cassette recordings of
Christie's eloquent banquet address at the 1986 IHR con-
ference are available from the IHR for $9.95.)
Free Speech in Canada
For those who challenge the official view of the semi-
sacrosanct Holocaust story, "free speech" is not quite free in
Canada. Regardless of one's views about the Holocaust issue,
or even of Ziindel, any open-minded reader of The Holocaust
on Trial will appreciate the significance of this trial for the
issue of free speech.
Contrary to what the Canadian government has insisted all
along, this was unquestionably a "free speech" case, as even
the New York Times acknowledged in a rare American
newspaper report on the trial. Alan Borovoy, a leading Cana-
Book Reviews
471
dian civil liberties advocate, declared that the arcane and rare-
ly invoked law under which Ziindel was tried should be
abolished. It is no exaggeration to say that the Ziindel trial was
one of the most important tests in many years of fundamental
legal rights in North America. (As this review goes to press,
Canada's Supreme Court is reviewing the Ziindel case to
decide the constitutionality of the law under which he was
tried.)
The author of The Holocaust on Trial is an American writer
in his late thirties. Robert Lenski is also the compiler-editor of
Toward a New Science of Man, a collection of insightful and
thought-provoking quotations on society, race, liberty and
human behavior. (This 250-page work, published in 1981, is
available from The Noontide Press for $ 7.00 plus $ 2.00
postage and handling). To write his Holocaust book, Lenski
carefully went through every line of the official transcript of
the four-month-long trial. He also took account of numerous
newspaper and magazine articles, and spoke with a number of
the key individuals involved in the case.
Although the author treats Ziindel and Holocaust Revi-
sionism sympathetically, this is by no means a one-sided Revi-
sionist polemic. In fact, Lenski gives the impression of being a
Holocaust agnostic. Mistakes and fumblings by ZiindePs
witnesses are not ignored, and telling arguments and effective
points by prosecution witnesses and the Crown attorney are
duly presented.
In the introduction and in the first chapter, Lenski provides
essential background information and effectively sets the
book's tone. He tells of the defendant's youth in Germany, his
emigration to Canada, successful career as an artist, and his
"political awakening." Lenski succinctly explains how Ziindel
became a focus of national attention during the first
"Holocaust Trial" in 1985.
As Lenski relates in Chapter 2, Canada's newspapers and
television closely followed the unfolding drama of that first
trial. Canadians across the country were able to learn— albeit
in an often sensationalized way— that there is an alternative
view of the orthodox Holocaust extermination story. In strik-
ing contrast to this copious coverage, the media almost com-
pletely ignored the second trial in 1988. The role of organized
Jewry in pressuring publishers and editors to curtail reporting
of the second Ziindel trial has been nothing less than
472
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
outrageous, as Canadian journalist Doug Collins and others
have emphasized. (See Collins' essay in the Fall 1991 Journal.)
The Testimony
Lenski reviews the 1985 testimony of Raul Hilberg, a promi-
nent Holocaust historian and author of the three-volume stan-
dard study, The Destruction of the European Jews. Shaken by
defense attorney Doug Christie's rigorous cross-examination
questioning during the first trial, the Austrian-born Jewish
professor refused to return as a prosecution witness. Conse-
quently, Hilberg's lengthy testimony was laboriously read
aloud to the bored members of the jury in the second Ziindel
trial by prosecution attorney John Pearson.
The prosecution's main witness, American Holocaust
historian Christopher Browning, was asked to comment in
detail on the Harwood booklet. Lenski faithfully reports on the
highlights of Browning's testimony— for which he was paid
$150 (Canadian) per hour— including his most persuasive
arguments and pointed criticisms of the Harwood booklet.
As a "functionalist" Holocaust historian who knows that
hard evidence for the Holocaust is elusive, Browning
postulates that the extermination of Europe's Jews began
without a budget, central plan or even a direct order. He has
speculated that Hitler may have set an enormous extermina-
tion program into motion with nothing more than a silent
"nod" to subordinates.
In a relentless and sometimes brilliant cross-examination in-
terrogation, defense attorney Doug Christie wrung numerous
damaging admissions from Browning. As Lenski relates, for
example, the 4 3 -year-old university professor (who is also a
member of the advisory board of the vehemently Zionist
Simon Wiesenthal Center) claimed not to be aware that the
Allies had used torture and threats to force German officials
into signing incriminating statements about alleged German
atrocities. Nor was Browning aware of the massive persecu-
tion of members of the ethnic German minority community in
Poland just prior to the outbreak of war in 1939 (which was a
decisive factor in Hitler's decision to attack).
Browning expressed confidence in the reliability of the
postwar "confessions" of SS officer Kurt Gerstein, which have
served as a major pillar of the Holocaust extermination story.
But the historian did not know, for example, that Gerstein had
Book Reviews
473
"confessed" that at Auschwitz alone "millions of children" had
been killed by holding cotton wads of poison under their
noses. (Henri Roques thoroughly discredits this key "witness"
in his doctoral dissertation, The "Confessions" of Kurt Gerstein,
which is available from the IHR.)
Questioned by prosecution attorney Pearson, Browning
confidently cited a portion of the official wartime journal of
the German governor of Poland, Hans Frank, as critically im-
portant evidence for the Holocaust extermination thesis. But
under cross examination, Browning was obliged to acknowl-
edge that he had not read the complete text of Frank's wartime
journal, and that he was ignorant of what Frank had said on
this subject as a Nuremberg Tribunal defendant.
No witness testimony is overlooked by Lenski, including the
following:
— Ditlieb Felderer spoke in detail about his numerous inspec-
tion visits of camp sites in Poland. He presented and com-
mented on some 300 slides taken during those trips.
—German writer Thies Christophersen was stationed at
Auschwitz in 1944 as a junior army officer. He visited
Birkenau— supposedly the most important killing center-
several times during the height of the alleged extermination
period, and saw no sign of killings.
—Russell Barton, a British-born physician who served with
British forces as a medical orderly in the infamous Bergen-
Belsen camp at the end of the war, confirmed that mass deaths
there were an indirect consequence of the conflict, and not of
any deliberate German policy. He noted that Jewish inmates in
eastern camps, including Auschwitz, were given a choice by
their German captors of either remaining behind to wait for
the advancing Soviets, or leaving, usually on foot, with the
retreating German forces.
—Austrian-born Canadian Maria Van Herwaarden, who sur-
vived two years of internment in Auschwitz I and II
(Birkenau), confirmed that conditions were generally dread-
ful, and that many fellow inmates succumbed to disease. At
the same time, though, and contrary to widespread "rumors,"
she testified that she saw no evidence of extermination or
homicidal gassings.
—Joseph G. Burg confirmed that he, along with many other
Jews, had been cruelly mistreated by Romanian authorities
474
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
during the war. But he emphatically rejected the allegations of
a German extermination policy or program. Indeed, he
testified, the Germans treated the Jews much more humanely
than did the Romanians. Burg said that he inspected the
Auschwitz and Majdanek camps in 1945, just months after the
end of the war, but found no evidence of extermination gas
chambers at either site.
— Emil Lachout certified the contents of a 1948 Austrian
Military Police Service document which confirmed that
numerous false claims about homicidal gas chambers were
based on perjured testimony by former inmates and
statements obtained from Germans by torture. (See: IHR Jour-
nal, Spring 1988, pp. 117-126.)
-In spite of a bad cold, Bradley Smith proved to be one of the
more effective witnesses. The jury members seemed to be
visibly impressed with the straight-forward, common-sense
responses and observations of this veteran free thinker and
libertarian. He held up admirably under Pearson's barrage of
badgering and often exasperatingly petty questions.
— Ivan Lagac£, a funeral director and crematorium manager
from Calgary, explained in detail why widely accepted claims
about cremation at Auschwitz and Birkenau are not technical-
ly possible. Allegations that SS camp officials were able to
cremate Jewish corpses in just 15 or 20 minutes cannot
possibly be true, he said, pointing out that even modern
crematory facilities require about an hour and a half to
cremate a body. Claims by Holocaust historian Hilberg and
others that 4,400 bodies were cremated daily in Birkenau's
facilities are "preposterous" and "beyond the realm of reality,"
Lagacg declared.
Lenski devotes most of a chapter to my testimony, which
was given during five often grueling days on the stand.
Christie took me line by line through the Harwood booklet,
asking me to comment on the accuracy of just about every
sentence. As a result, my testimony touched on virtually every
aspect of the Holocaust issue, including the role of the Einsatz-
gruppen security police units in the occupied Soviet ter-
ritories, the origins and precise nature of Germany's wartime
Jewish policy, and the Nuremberg Tribunal testimony of war-
time SS prosecutor Konrad Morgen. (For more on my
testimony and role in the trial, see the IHR Journal, Winter
1989-90, pp. 389-425.)
Book Reviews
475
While readily acknowledging the errors and misleading
statements of Harwood's booklet, I affirmed its central thesis:
there was no German policy or program to exterminate
Europe's Jews, and nothing like six million Jews perished dur-
ing the Second World War. Like Faurisson and Irving who
would testify later, I stressed that the booklet's errors are
almost entirely minor, and that in any case are not critically
important to its main thesis.
During his wide-ranging and detailed testimony, French
professor Robert Faurisson also touched on virtually every
major aspect of the Holocaust story. He focused particularly
on his investigation of execution gas chambers in the United
States, and the alleged extermination gas chambers at the
former German camps. Europe's leading Holocaust Revi-
sionist also further discredited the testimony of star prosecu-
tion witness Browning.
Faurisson spoke at some length about the costly and ex-
hausting trials and other outrageous legal difficulties he has
had to endure in France as a result of his statements and
writings on this issue. His ordeal— which is almost
unbelievable in a late twentieth century European
democracy— has included nearly fatal physical attacks by
bigoted thugs. (See also Faurisson's essays: "The Ziindel
Trials," IHR Journal, Winter 1988-89, pp. 417-431, and, "My
Life as a Revisionist," IHR Journal, Spring 1989, pp. 5-63.)
Without a doubt, the trial's most important witness was
Massachusetts execution hardware expert Fred Leuchter,
who testified at length about his on-site investigation of the
alleged extermination gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau
and Majdanek. For some years, Faurisson had been saying
that a neutral American gas chamber expert should carry out
an impartial investigation of the alleged extermination gas
chambers of Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau— the five
sites that are the core of the Holocaust extermination story.
Persuaded by Faurisson, Ziindel commissioned Leuchter to
carry out this history-making investigation.
Leuchter's qualifications as America's foremost execution
hardware expert were well established in the Toronto court-
room. For one thing, William Armontrout, warden of the
Missouri State Penitentiary, testified under oath that he had
consulted with Leuchter on the design of his state's execution
gas chamber, and declared that Leuchter is the only such
specialist in the United States.
476
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
As is now well known, of course, Leuchter concluded that
the inspected sites were never used as extermination gas
chambers, and never could have been used for that purpose.
Since the 1988 trial, his detailed report on his investigation
has been widely circulated around the world in numerous
languages, and has itself become history-making. As a result,
Leuchter has become the target of a vicious campaign by the
same mafia that has tried to silence Ziindel.
The final defense witness was David Irving, arguably the
most widely read and recognized historian in the world today.
Speaking in clear and imposing language, the tall, handsome
British scholar made a striking impression. Lenski's record of
his wide-ranging and often fascinating testimony alone makes
this book well worth reading.
Irving's appearance as a witness for Ziindel was all the more
remarkable because prosecution attorney Pearson had praised
him earlier as a dissident historian who nevertheless did not
"deny the Holocaust." For some years, though, Irving had
privately been disturbed by the absence of any documentary
evidence for a German extermination program or policy. Stud-
ying the just-completed Leuchter Report in Toronto settled
the matter. In the courtroom, as Lenski reports, Irving
dramatically repudiated his earlier position and endorsed the
Revisionist view of the Holocaust story. After referring to
Leuchter's report as "shattering" and "a stroke of genius on the
part of the defense," the judge forbade Irving from making any
further reference to it.
Irving endorsed the central thesis of the Harwood booklet,
while also conceding its obvious flaws. "I don't think there was
any overall Reich policy to kill the Jews," he said. He pointed
out the injustices of the Nuremberg Tribunal, and spoke of the
persecution that invariably befalls anyone who seriously
challenges the Holocaust extermination story.
Just as Ziindel had intended, this legal contest became to a
considerable extent a "trial on the Nuremberg trial." As the
trial progressed, the narrower legal questions of his alleged
guilt and the character of the Harwood booklet became less
and less relevant. Indeed, Judge Thomas complained that "this
trial became a showpiece for the Institute for Historical
Review."
In his concluding chapter, "Summation, Verdict,
Aftermath," the author ably summarizes the final pleas to the
Book Reviews
Ml
jury by attorneys Christie and Pearson. Lenski also attempts to
explain the seemingly inexplicable guilty verdict, and
describes some of the consequences and implications of this
trial for Canada and the Western world.
In spite of claims by both prosecutor Pearson and Judge
Thomas that the Harwood booklet "will likely cause racial and
social intolerance unless something is done about it," not one
bit of evidence was presented to show that anyone had ever
been harmed or injured as a result of Ziindel's publication of
Did Six Million Really Die?. On this point alone, an open-
minded outsider might easily assume that the jury would
decide to acquit the defendant. And yet, in spite of all the
testimony and evidence, the jury members agreed on a guilty
verdict. Judge Thomas then sentenced Ziindel to nine months
imprisonment.
Why did the jury members decide to convict? Lenski pro-
vides some probable but unavoidably speculative answers. For
one thing, by pointing to Ziindel's publication of booklets that
uncritically praise Hitler and the Third Reich, the prosecution
succeeded in portraying the defendant as an unrepentant
Nazi— just about the most damning accusation that can be
made against anyone these days.
The prosecution was also able to discredit— to a greater or
lesser degree— just about every one of Ziindel's witnesses. The
impact of Russell Barton's helpful and enlightening
eyewitness testimony about Bergen-Belsen, for example, was
lost on the jury when he readily agreed with Pearson that Ger-
man officials had exterminated six million Jews. It did not
seem to matter that, as he admitted, this belief was derived
from what he had casually read and heard from others, and
was not based on any personal experience or systematic
study. Robert Faurisson's trials and legal difficulties in France
were cited by the prosecution attorney to cast doubt on his
motives and ethics, and to portray him as a threat to social
peace and public order. Similarly, Irving was portrayed as a
right-winger, Felderer as mentally unsound, Christophersen
as a Nazi, and so forth.
Time and time again, this trial proved that Holocaust Revi-
sionists are held to a more exacting standard than other
dissidents. Canadian authorities do not bother themselves
about publications that challenge any other generally accepted
view of contemporary history.
478
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
As unfair as it was, the Ziindel trial points up the impor-
tance of rigorous accuracy on the part of Holocaust Revi-
sionists. Revisionists have set themselves the great task of try-
ing to persuade people that what they have been told by
leading historians, standard reference works and governmen-
tal authorities is not true. For this reason, Revisionists have
the burden of proof. It is not enough to convince those who
are already inclined to doubt the Holocaust extermination
story. To have any significant or lasting impact, it is essential
to reach and, persuade those who are understandably quite
skeptical of Holocaust Revisionism— particularly intelligent
and open-minded men and women of good will who influence
others.
This book is not without defects. Like Sergeant Friday in the
old "Dragnet" series, Lenski has given us a mostly "just the
facts, Ma'am" account. The main weakness of this essentially
journalistic work is probably its paucity of analysis, which
would have helped the reader to make better sense of the
abundant historical information.
Also, because Lenski was not in Toronto during the trial
itself, his book does not adequately communicate the trial's
dramatic tension. The electric atmosphere in the large and
often packed Toronto courtroom easily rivaled the drama of a
LA Law television showdown. Nor does the author quite cap-
ture the sense of dynamic purpose, idealism and drama that
suffused ZiindeJhaus, the defendant's barracks-like campaign
command center. Finally, Lenski's less than relevant and
sometimes subjective comments about racial/social issues
detract from the book's effectiveness.
But these are relatively minor defects. On balance, I heartily
recommend this readable, well-organized, engaging and even
fascinating account.
For those interested in what is probably the most socially
and political significant historians' debate of our time, this is
both an excellent introduction to the dispute and a valuable
reference survey of the entire Holocaust issue. And whatever
one may think of Ernst Ziindel or Revisionism, the author
deserves our thanks for producing this memorable account of
a history-making trial with the most profound social implica-
tions.
Book Reviews
479
STALIN'S APOLOGIST, WALTER DURANTY: THE NEW
YORK'S TIMES'S MAN IN MOSCOW by SJ. Taylor. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Hb., 404 pp., il-
lustrated, $24.95; ISBN 0-19-505700-7.
Reviewed by Jack Wikoff
Flamboyant and opinionated, Walter Duranty represented
the quintessence of the star newspaper reporter. His beat
was the Soviet Union. From the Revolution to the Second
World War, Duranty's dispatches were front page news.
Yet readers of The New York Times had little idea of the real
Walter Duranty, who was a complex, amoral figure. S.J.
Taylor's superb biography explores the dark side of Duranty's
personality as well as the impact his reporting had on the
world's perception of Joseph Stalin's Marxist dictatorship.
Taylor demonstrates how Duranty's character flaws in-
fluenced his reporting. Stalin's Apologist is the story of how
Walter Duranty sold out for perks and privileges granted by
the Stalinist elite. Abandoning any last shred of personal
ethics, Duranty allowed himself to be prostituted and used to
cover up the crimes of the Soviet regime.
Duranty's journalistic corruption hit bottom in the early
1930's. During the forced collectivization of agriculture in the
Ukraine, brutal implementation of Stalin's Five-Year Plan was
achieved through a contrived famine and massive deporta-
tions resulting in up to eight to ten million deaths. Knowing
full well this atrocity was taking place, Walter Duranty chose
to cover up rather than report it to the world (a decision which
evidently had the full approval of his bosses at the Times).
Duranty's self-indulgent, egoistic approach to living surfac-
ed early in life. The son of a prosperous, staunchly Presby-
terian English family, he attended the elite "public" schools of
Harrow and Bedford, then was graduated from Cambridge.
But despite his ruling-class education, Duranty despised the
British aristocracy, while simultaneously evincing no sym-
pathy for working people (or at least those who lacked power
and influence).
During his adult years, Duranty rarely returned to England.
His biographer succinctly describes his family relations, or
lack thereof, in the following passage:
480
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
When his mother died in 1916, there was no word from
Duranty. Fourteen years later, his sister died at forty-five, a
spinster. Her life has been devoted to her father, who outlived
her by three years. And when in 1933, plagued by senility and
the diseases of old age, William Steel Duranty died, he left a
personal estate valued at merely £430, besides the house his
daughter had left him- a pathetic come-down from his early
days of opulence and plenty. Walter Duranty's only
acknowledgement of his family in all of those years was a curt
document notorized in Moscow, authorizing his father's
solicitors to sell the house, take their fee, and send him the pro-
ceeds.
Publicly, he solved the problem once and for all in his
autobiography, Search for a Key, by killing off his parents in a
railway accident and orphaning himself at the age of ten, an
only child.
It put an end to any unwelcome questions.
On leaving college, he spent several years touring, coming to
ground in pre-World War-I Paris, after he had squandered
an inheritance left him by his grandfather.
Bohemian and rou6, Duranty secured a reputation as a
cosmopolitan globe-trotter through his witty conversation and
fluency in several languages. Despite his short stature and lack
of good looks, he was never at a loss for female companion-
ship, even after a train accident left him with a wooden leg.
Head-up for money, Duranty persuaded Wythe Williams,
head of the Paris bureau of The New York Times, to pay him to
write a story about a Frenchman who was going to fly an
airplane upside down. Three months later, on December 1,
1913, Duranty was hired by The New York Times.
Duranty spent his days in Paris perfecting his journalistic
technique, while his nights were devoted to dissolute med-
dling in hobbies that are today styled "New Age." A constant
companion of Duranty in the pre-war "City of Light" was the
occultist and black magician, Aleister Crowley, whom the
Britsh press had dubbed "the Wickedest Man in the World."
Crowley claimed other titles for himself, but preferred to be
called "Beast 666."
One of Crowley's many female companions, Jane Cheron,
performed the role of Scarlet Woman (as in the Book of Revela-
tions) in Crowley's debauched rituals. Duranty was later to
marry Cheron, although they rarely lived together. Marriage
did not, of course, prevent him from perpetually chasing
skirts, sometimes before his wife's eyes.
Book Reviews
481
On December 31, 1913 Crowley began a series of 23
ritualistic "workings" of sex magic with Duranty and another
partner named Victor Neuburg. Crowley was later to claim
pompously that these "Paris workings" had been the "magical"
cause of the First World War, a prelude to the new Aeon, the
Age of Horus. 1 As for Duranty's opinion of the Paris rituals,
Ms. Taylor reports that he "would later say little, only that he
no longer believed in anything."
Aleister Crowley and Jane Cheron were lifelong heroin ad-
dicts. Duranty, too, was quite partial to alcohol and drugs, be-
ing at one time addicted to opium, although in fairness his
opium habit can be traced in part to recuperation for the acci-
dent which cost him his leg.
When the First World War began in August 1914, Duranty
initially covered the war for The New York Times from the
French capital. When he had gained sufficient professional ex-
perience, he was promoted to war correspondent, filing many
dispatches on the horrors of trench warfare based on his visits
to the front.
When Duranty began work as a reporter, his writing
reflected the prevalent bias of English society. At the time of
the First World War, his personal prejudices were as virulent-
ly anti-German as those of most other Englishmen: in his auto-
biographical I Write As I Please he later admitted to having
written at least one falsified WWI propaganda story.
After the war, Duranty traveled through Germany, Poland,
and the Baltic states, reporting on the poverty and revolu-
tionary turmoil besetting war-torn Eastern Europe.
In 1920, famine began to ravage the Soviet Union, a direct
result of the turmoil of the Revolution. Five to six million peo-
ple starved to death or died from disease, a mass tragedy of the
early years of Bolshevism which was to foreshadow the far
greater evil to befall the Ukraine, North Caucasus and the
Lower Volga a decade later.
The Soviet leadership sought financial aid from the West,
ostensibly to aid victims of the famine, but in reality to secure
the Red tyranny. One of the stipulations of Herbert Hoover's
American Relief Association was that the Bolsheviks allow
Western reporters into Russia. Maxim Litvonov, a Jew and
prominent Bolshevik, later to become Soviet Foreign Minister,
determined which journalists were granted visas. After some
wrangling (he had written a few anti-Soviet articles earlier),
Duranty was allowed into the Soviet Union as a reporter.
482
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
In the economic free-for-all of Lenin's short-lived New
Economic Policy, Duranty was able to parlay his access to
foreign currency into a house in Moscow, complete with
English-style fireplace. He lived in luxury, particularly when
compared to the average citizen in the "Worker's Paradise," and
was able to purchase imported food, candies, cigarettes and
razor blades. He owned an automobile and had a retinue of
servants including a chauffeur, cleaning lady, secretary, cook,
and mistress (Duranty's wife chose conveniently to live in
France.)
Walter Duranty had also considerable travel privileges
within the Soviet Union, and could of course leave the country
for pleasure or business in Paris, New York and other world
capitals. He learned to speak and read Russian, an invaluable
skill for discovering what really went on in the Soviet Union.
Soon enough, The New York Times's man in Moscow had
many friends among the Soviet elite.
When Lenin died in January, 1924, a struggle for power en-
sued among the Bolshevist elite. Duranty shrewdly predicted
that Stalin would come out on top. 2 During this period many
pundits were forecasting that communism would not last, yet
Duranty confidently predicted the survival of the Soviet
system.
Duranty was among the earliest Western journalists to
praise the Soviet crash programs that forced Marxism on the
Russian people. He coined the infamous slogan "You can't
make an omelette without breaking eggs," 3 which he was to
use frequently in his writing. Inevitably, he was seen by many
as an apologist for Soviet communism, and Duranty's detrac-
tors took to calling The New York Times "the Uptown Daily
Worker."
In January an all-out drive to collectivize Soviet agriculture
was announced in Pravda. On a trip to Central Asia that year,
Duranty managed to see a trainload of exiled kulaks. 4
Transported in foul, wretchedly hot railroad cars with barred
windows, Duranty described them as:
. . . more like caged animals than human beings, not wild beasts
but dumb cattle, patient with suffering eyes. Debris and jetsam,
victims of the March to Progress. 5
Bolshevism was returning the peasant to a condition of ser-
vitude far more hideous than any Tsarist-era serfdom.
Seeing such magnitude of mass suffering should have
Book Reviews
483
alerted Duranty to what was really happening in the Soviet
Union, yet as Taylor details, Duranty quickly dismissed what
he had seen, writing that he had "seen worse debris than that,
trains full of wounded from the Front in France going back to
be patched up for a fresh bout of slaughter."
In late 1930, Duranty was honored by being granted an in-
terview with Stalin himself. 6 The author of Stalin's Apologist
details how with the publication of this exclusive interview
with Stalin, Duranty became an international celebrity and
one of the best-known journalists in the world.
Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize for best news correspondent
in 1932. Special citation was made of his dispatches dealing
with the Soviet Five-Year Plan. In his acceptance speech he
said that he had come "to respect the Soviet leaders, especially
Stalin, whom I consider to have grown into a really great
statesman." 7
During that year a debate was raging in the United States
over recognition of the Soviet Union. Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, while campaigning for the presidency, invited
Duranty to lunch to discuss the situation in the USSR.
While Walter Duranty was rubbing elbows with the power-
ful, a conspiracy of deliberate starvation was being im-
plemented in the Soviet Union. One of the first to report the
famine in Ukraine to the West was Andrew Cairns. In the
spring of 1932 this young Canadian agricultural expert traveled
through the grain-growing districts of southern Russia, report-
ing to his superiors on widespread food shortages and starva-
tion. He was accompanied by D. Otto Schiller, an agricultural
specialist attached to the German embassy in Moscow, who
was fluent in both Russian and Ukrainian. Cairn's detailed let-
ters describing the widespread suffering he had seen were
made available to the highest levels of the British Government.
But Cairns's reports were never published by British
authorities. J.S. Taylor reports:
Many years later, asked why he had not published the report
on his own authority, Cairns would admit that he had been
overly discouraged, even threatened, from doing so by power-
ful political figures of the Left in Great Britain whom he be-
lieved at the time could do him great harm. He named Beatrice
Webb, specifically, who, with her husband Sidney, would
praise the accomplishments of Stalin's Five-Year Plan in their
massive, two-volume work Soviet Communism: A New Civiliza-
tion?
484
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Cairns's employer, the Empire Trading Board, went into li-
quidation, and Cairns did not return to the Soviet Union. Dr.
Schiller published a "devastating" report in Germany, which
resulted in his being immediately expelled from the Soviet
Union.
During this period the Soviets were attempting to ap-
propriate as much agricultural produce from the peasants as
possible, to sell abroad. The foreign exchange thus obtained
was used to finance heavy industry. In private conversations
late in 1932 with William Strang, counsellor at the British Em-
bassy in Moscow, Duranty confirmed that there was indeed a
"present breakdown in [Soviet] agriculture." Duranty told
Strang: "There are millions of people in Russia, peasants,
whom it is fairly safe to leave in want. But the industrial pro-
letariat, about 10 percent of the population, must at all costs be
fed if the revolution is to be safeguarded."
Duranty filed a dispatch in December 1932 which described
the situation in Soviet agriculture in negative terms. As a
result Duranty was visited by powerful Soviet authorities, who
upbraided him for his faithlessness. Fearful he would not be
allowed back into Russia, Duranty postponed a trip to France
(at this time Duranty's Soviet mistress, Katya, was pregnant
with his child).
Taylor details how, at the end of 1932, the noose was steadily
drawn around the collective neck of the Soviet peasant. 8 An
international passport system was introduced which kept the
starving kulaks from migrating to the cities. In the spring of
1933 a law was passed which forbade a peasant to leave the
collective farm where he was employed "without a contract
from his future employers, ratified by the collective farm
authorities." Duranty praised these measures, claiming they
were designed "to purge the city of undesirable elements."
After two American newspapermen, William Stoneman of
the Chicago Daily News and Ralph Barnes of the New York
Herald Tribune, filed reports on the famine, the Soviet
authorities instituted a ban on travel for foreign journalists.
Malcolm Muggeridge, a young English journalist for the
Manchester Guardian with pro-Soviet sympathies, arrived in
Moscow in September 1932. Soon he became disenchanted
with the Soviet system. By late winter, 1933, reporters in
Moscow were hearing rumors that the grain crop would be
totally inadequate to feed the population. Muggeridge set off
on his own, without permission, to investigate the situation.
Book Reviews
485
At the end of March 1933 he published a series of articles in
the Guardian confirming widespread famine. His reports had
been delivered to England in the British diplomatic bag. Mug-
geridge wrote that 'The famine is an organized one" and that it
was "a military occupation; worse, active war." He wrote of
"frequent cases of suicides and sometimes even of cannibalism
. . . the conditions would have been incredible to [Muggeridge]
if he had not seen them with his own eyes."
The Guardian played down the stories and Muggeridge ac-
cused the editors of mutilating his accounts. Muggeridge was
attacked by the left-leaning British establishment and
blacklisted.
Several other journalists visited the stricken regions and
honestly reported what they had seen. William Henry
Chamberlin sent dispatches to The Christian Science Monitor
and the Manchester Guardian. Gareth Jones traveled through
the stricken area for three weeks. In a press conference in
Berlin, a lecture in London, and finally in an article in the
Guardian, Jones reported the mass starvation.
Alarmed at the publicity, Moscow applied strong pressure
on Western journalists to contradict Jones' account. Duranty
obligingly obeyed his masters and for the occassion again trot-
ted out his "omelette" quote. His article was titled "Russians
Hungry But Not Starving." 9
But— to put it brutally— you can't make an omelette without
breaking eggs, and the Bolshevik leaders are just as indifferent
to the casualties that may be involved in their drive toward
socialism as any General during the World War who ordered a
costly attack in order to show his superiors that he and his divi-
sion possessed the proper soldierly spirit. In fact, the
Bolsheviki are more indifferent because they are animated by
fanatical conviction.
Throughout 1933 Duranty continued to play down the ex-
tent of the famine. He claimed "There is no actual starvation or
deaths from starvation but there is widespread mortality from
diseases due to malnutrition ..."
In September of that year he reported that "the use of the
word famine in connection with the North Caucasus is a sheer
absurdity." He wrote of "plump babies" and "fat calves." Max-
im Litvinov found Duranty's words useful in deflecting a letter
of inquiry from an American Congressman, Herman
Kopelmann of Connecticut.
486
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Shocking proof of the discrepancy between what Duranty
reported and what he knew to be the truth is revealed in a
September 30, 1933 British Embassy dispatch which reads in
part:
According to Mr. Duranty the population of the North
Caucasus and the Lower Volga had decreased in the past year
by three million, and the population of the Ukraine by four to
five million. The Ukraine has been bled white . . . Mr. Duranty
thinks it quite possible that as many as ten million people may
have died directly or indirectly from lack of food in the Soviet
Union during the past year.
Newspaper readers did not get the unvarnished truth. What
they got was evasion, cover-up and falsification.
Walter Duranty had reached the peak of international suc-
cess and fame by selling out to a totalitarian regime and cover-
ing up one of the greatest atrocities of the twentieth century.
Malcolm Muggeridge was later to say that Duranty was "the
greatest liar of any journalist I have met in fifty years of jour-
nalism. "Stuart Alsop's verdict was that Duranty was "a fash-
ionable prostitute" and "lying was his stock in trade."
Duranty was awarded for his mendacity by the American
and Soviet establishment. He received permission to accom-
pany Litvinov across the Atlantic on the S.S. Berengaria for
negotiations leading to American recognition of the Soviet
Union. Duranty was present at the November 18, 1933 press
conference in which President Roosevelt proudly announced
that the U.S. would recognize the U.S.S.R. Duranty was also
among the guests of honor at a lavish dinner for 1,500
dignitaries at New York's Waldorf-Astoria.
Stalin granted Duranty a second exclusive interview on
Christmas Day, 1933. 10
There were to be other occasions when Walter Duranty
would conspicuously serve as apologist for the Soviet regime.
In 1936 a series of show trials and purges began against alleg-
ed opponents of the Stalinist regime.
In January 1937, sixteen prominent Soviet officials were ac-
cused of conspiring with Germany and Japan to overthrow the
Soviet government. Trotsky, in exile in Mexico, was absurdly
accused in absentia of plotting with the Nazis.
Public confession of guilt by many of the defendants as-
tounded the West. Ms. Taylor writes:
Book Reviews
487
Predictably, Western response to this second trial was one of
confusion, and there was a half-willing reluctance to believe in
the guilt of the accused. If the confessions were true, the
reasoning went, it demonstrated that conditions within the
country were so bad that avowed and dedicated Party
members would conspire with Fascists to overthrow their own
government. If untrue, the trials were an indictment of the en-
tire system in the Soviet Union.
Duranty wrote in The New Republic that he believed the con-
fessions to be true. Outraged, Trotsky directly attacked Duran-
ty in a speech for his "psychological divinations." In 1938, at
the last and largest of the trials, Nikolai Bukharin, a former
member of the Politburo, condemned Duranty from the dock.
With the coming of World War II, the New York Times
began to cut back on and centralize operations. Late in 1940,
the Moscow bureau was closed down. At the end of that year,
Walter Duranty's twenty-five years with the New York Times
came to an end.
Duranty left his mistress Katya and their seven-year-old son
Michael behind in Moscow. He did not make it easy for them
to contact him. In 1948 Katya managed to get a letter through
to him. In awkward English she wrote:
I don't believe it is possible to forget, that here, in Moscow
growing up your only the son, that we lived together nearly for
twenty years, that I gave you the best years of my life . . . Could
not you write to me something, or if you don't want to do that,
for God knows what reason, you must send a letter to Mike. He
is already 15 years old, he is not a child any longer and
understands things very well. He wants to know and must
know where his father is, why his father keeps silence for such
a long time.
Although he occasionally sent a little money, Duranty never
made an effort to see them again.
In the last years of his life Duranty lived in Hollywood and
Florida. Until his death in 1957 he continued to write and lec-
ture, although increasingly his political views were out of date.
Now, three and a half decades after Walter Duranty's death,
the Soviet system is defunct, assigned to the garbage heap of
history. What is astounding is that it managed to survive for
seventy years.
J.S. Taylor's excellent book demonstrates how, in addition to
Duranty, many Western journalists, "intellectuals,"
businessmen and diplomats ignored the crimes of Stalin and
488
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
company. The New York Times, the so-called "Newspaper of
Record," and scores of other publications suppressed the truth
and spewed the Soviet line.
Nor did Western complicity in an apology for Soviet
atrocities end with Stalin's death. At the 1945-46 show trials in
Nuremberg, Germany, Allied apologists for Stalin worked
hand-in-hand with the murderous functionaries who had
created the Ukrainian famine, the show trials and the gulag.
The same physical and mental torture techniques developed
by Soviet commissars were used on Germans.
Even today, the "Nazi-hunting" office of Special Investiga-
tions hunts down and deports from America aged immigrants
who served, often in their teenage years, as guards and other
low-ranking functionaries of the Axis nations half a century
ago, using information, evidence, and testimony originally
supplied by the same henchmen who helped carry out Stalin's
terror famine and his numerous other sanguinary crimes.
Meanwhile, leading lieutenants, not infrequently Jewish, of
Stalin and his successors live on untroubled, in the "post-
communist" Soviet Union or in Israel and the West, to be sent
off with discreet obituaries in Duranty's old paper, The New
York Times, when they finally expire. Clearly, for the media
which dominates today's popular (and "informed") mentality,
the duty of "memory" and the "demands of "justice" (as regards
the "Holocaust") are not to be honored for far greater, and
essentially unpunished, crimes of communism.
Marxism's deady toll of human suffering would have been
impossible without the complicity of thousands of apologists
for Stalin. Walter Duranty was but a single sordid example.
Many more biographies remain to be written. Much more
revising of the lies and evasions of the Western
Establishment's "Sovietologists," revision based on the public
record of the past seventy-five years as well as the documents
coming to light in Russian and other archives, lies before us.
Notes
1. Only portions of two pages in Stalin's Apologist are devoted to a
description of the ritual magic employed by Crowley and Duranty. For
more information see the following source material listed by J.S.
Taylor: Martin Starr's Sex & Religion (Nashville, 1981), which contains
a diary of the Paris workings, and John Symond's The Great Beast: The
Book Reviews
489
Life and Magick of Aleister Crowley (London: MacDonald, 1971).
Additional material on the relationship between Duranty, Crowley
and Neuburg can be found in Francis King's The Magical World of
Aleister Crowley (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc.,
1978).
The occultism practiced by Aleister Crowley appears repeatedly in
the twentieth century as a sinister undercurrent of sociopolitical
revolution. For a detailed, candid description of the history and
method of this subversive philosophy by a knowledgeable adherent,
see Peter Tompkin's The Magic of Obelisks (New York: Harper and
Row, 1981), pages 309 through 462.
2. Walter Duranty, "Five Men Directing Destiny of Russia," New York
Times, January 18, 1923, p. 3.
3. The "omelette" quotation first appeared in Duranty's mediocre poem
"Red Square" in a two-page spread with six photographs in the
September 18, 1932, NYT (VI: p. 10). The lines containing the
"omelette" quotation read:
"Russians may be hungry and short of clothes and comfort, But you
can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."
4. The kuJaks were "middle- ranked peasants" in Soviet agricultural
regions. This "class" of farmer generally worked hard and owned
enough land and livestock to be moderately prosperous (by Soviet
standards).
5. Walter Duranty, I Write As I Please (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1935), p. 288.
6. Walter Duranty, "Stalin Sees Capitalists Drifting Surely to War," NYT,
December 1, 1930. Duranty also wrote a follow-up article in The New
York Times Magazine, January 18, 1931.
7. "Musical Play Gets the Pulitzer Award; Mrs. Buck, Pershing, Duranty
Honored," NYT, May 3, 1932, p. 1. Duranty expanded on this in an
interview with John F. Roche. "Uninterpreted News of Russia Puzzles
Prejudiced World, Says Duranty," Editor &• Publisher, June 4, 1932.
8. In the acknowledgements to Stalin's Apologist, S.J. Taylor credits
Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986) as a very important inspiration for her
biography of Walter Duranty. The Harvest of Sorrow is the only
thorough, complete account of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, and
belongs in every Revisionist library.
9. Walter Duranty, "Russians Hungry But Not Starving," NYT, March 31,
1933, p. 13.
10. Walter Duranty, "Stalin Says Japan Is Great Danger, Hopes for Peace,"
NYT, December 28, 1933, p. 8.
DOCUMENT
Mercy for Japs
The following exchange of letters was published in The Best
from Yank, The Army Weekly (Cleveland: The World Publish-
ing Co., 1945). Yank, to quote from its editors introduction to the
anthology, "was written by and for enlisted men" during the Se-
cond World War; The Best from Yank draws on material
published between the summer of 1942 and the fall of 1944 in
the sixteen different regional editions worldwide.
As the editors point out:
The writings, drawings, photographs and cartoons in this col-
lection were never intended originally to please civilian tastes.
They were made to order for the pages of Yank, The Army
Weekly, by enlisted men on active duty in the armed forces who
wanted to please other enlisted men and nobody else.
These letters would seem to indicate that the standards of
American GTs on observing the laws of warfare were somewhat
more flexible than those of American prosecutors at the war-
crimes trials at Tokyo, Nuremberg, and elsewhere, understand-
able though that may be.
Dear Yank:
As God is my witness I am sorry to read of the way two
American soldiers treated the enemy on Makin Island; they
shot some Japanese when they might have been able to take
them alive. I don't believe in killing unless it has to be done. I
am a servant of God, so when I get into battle I hope by His
help to take as many Japs alive as I can. If I am compelled to
destroy lives in battle I shall do so, but when U.S. troops throw
grenades into an enemy position and Japs run out unarmed
we should make an effort to take them alive. I know that if I
were in a dugout and forced to run out I would want mercy.
Camp Davis, N.C. -Pvt. Ralph H. Luckey
492
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Dear Yank:
We just read the letter written by that servant of God, Pvt.
Luckey, and wish to state that he has the wrong slant . . . After
being in combat and seeing medics being killed trying to help
our wounded makes you want to kill the bastards . . . Fair play
is fine among sportsmen but we are fighting back stabbers!
Hawaii Jap Killers*
♦Signed by Pvt. P. Stupar
Dear Yank:
. . . No mercy for murderers!
On Maneuvers
Dear Yank:
-Pvt. Sam Bonanno
Brother, Pvt. Luckey better live up to his last name if goes
into combat with the idea of taking Jap prisoners alive!
Port o/ Embarkation -Sgt. Carl Bethea*
*AJso signed by 13 others.
Dear Yank:
We are all Navy men who are suffering from combat fatigue.
Many of us have been strafed by Jap Zeros while floating
helplessly in the sea and have seen what the soldiers and
marines have gone through in this fight. If Pvt. Luckey heeds
his own call for mercy for Japs, his soul will belong to God but
his body will belong to the Japs . . .
-Vets ofWorldWarll
Norfolk Naval Hosp., Portsmouth, VA
Dear Yank:
... If I had another chance I certainly would do the same
thing those Yanks on Makin did. Shoot 'em and shoot 'em
dead. I know what I'm talking about. I have been there.
Camp BJanding, FJa. -T/Sgt. J.N. Olsen
Dear Yank:
. . . Please notify the FBI, G-2, anything -but have that guy
locked up!
Fort Custer, Mich. -Cpl. S. Schwartz
Document
493
Dear Yank:
Has Pvt. Luckey ever seen his friends and buddies shot
down by the Japs? Has he ever carried our dead out of the
jungle for burial? I have -and more, during the eight months I
spent on Guadalcanal. Pvt. Luckey will have no dead Japs on
his conscience when they kill him.
Harmon Gen. Hosp., Longview, Tex. —Pvt. C.E. Carter
Dear Yank:
. . . Luckey is out of this world and should be confined in a
small room heavily padded on four sides.
Bermuda -S/Sgt. Arthur J. Kaplan
Dear Yank:
Me and my buddies sure were mad as hell when we read
Pvt. Ralph Luckey's letter. He sure shot off his mouth about
our treatment of the Japs. The trouble is that he has had it nice
and soft so far . . .
Trinidad - Pfc. Edward Staffin
Dear Yank:
. . . We don't know whether to feel sorry for this guy or just
laugh the thing off . . .
-M/Sgt. W.F. Hardgrove*
NC Hosp., Mitchel Field, N. Y. (South Pacific)
♦Signed also by M/Sgt. R.M. Stephens fSWPJ; T/Sgts. L.C.
Sheehan (Britain] and N. Sedorick (BritianJ; S/Sgts. P.F.
Teraberry (Italy, Africa), R.I. Vogel (Italy, Africa), L.V. Behout
(CBIJ, J.M. Haresign (ItaJyJ and H.R. Garrison (New Guinea];
Sgts. W.J. PoJera, P. Nadzak (CBIJ and J. Seginah (Britain], and
Cpl. M.J. Bursie (New Guinea],
Dear Yank:
. . . Wake up, Luckey. The Jap doesn't care if God is his
witness or not.
Worthington Gen. Hosp., Tuscaloosa, Ala. —PFC. C.J. Nichols
494
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Dear Yank:
It's evening. We're sitting about two feet from our foxhole
thinking about a letter written by Pvt. Ralph H. Luckey from
Camp Davis, N.C. in a recent issue of Yank. Do you mind if we
ask him a question? Pvt. Luckey, you're now living in an Army
camp, just as we did. Making friends, just as we did. Friends
who, in time, will be much closer, dearer, to you than you
would believe possible.
We bunked together, ate together, laughed and played
together, worked and dated together. Recently we fought
together. During the battle, Blackie was wounded and taken
prisoner. When we advanced several hours later, we found
Blackie. His cheeks were punctured by sharp sticks— pulled
tight by a wire tourniquet, the sticks acting as a bit does for a
horse's mouth. There were slits made by a knife along the
center of his legs and on his side— just as if an artist had taken
pride in an act of torture well done.
We continued to move on. Do you think that we also
continued to remember the niceties of civilized warfare?
Central Pacific -S/Sgt. B.W. Milewski
This is the last of a series of GI comments in reply to Pvt.
Luckey's letter. Yank has received a great number of letters on
the subject, but only two readers supported the point of view
advocated by Pvt. Luckey.
HISTORICAL NEWS AND COMMENT
An Interview with Admiral Kimmel
Dean Clarence Manion
December 7. Whenever this fateful date reoccurs on the
calendar, it invariably revives a flood of tragic and pain-
ful recollections. The pain of recollection will be intensified
this year when you read the recently published frank, and
informative, memoirs of the widely experienced and
universally respected General Albert C. Wedemeyer
[Wedemeyer Reports! —Ed.]. This big revealing book begins
and ends with the emphatic and unequivocal assurance that
the attack on Pearl Harbor could have been— and should have
been— prevented, and that the United States could have— and
should have— stayed out of World War II.
Says Wedemeyer, and I quote: "The Soviet colossus would
not now bestride half the world had the United States kept out
of war— at least until Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany had
exhausted each other. But Franklin D. Roosevelt, the
proclaimed champion of democracy," continues the General,
"was as successful as any dictator could have been in keeping
Congress and the public in ignorance of his secret
commitments to Britain, commitments which flouted the will
and the wishes of the voters who had reelected him only after
he had assured them that he would keep us out of the war. The
fact that Japan's attack had been deliberately provoked was
obscured by the disaster at Pearl Harbor," says Wedemeyer.
"President Roosevelt had maneuvered us into the war by his
patently unneutral actions against Germany and the final
ultimatum against Japan."
So much for the beginning of Wedemeyer Reports! Near the
conclusion we find this, and I quote again:
"On December 4th, 1941, we received definite information
from two independent sources that Japan would attack the
United States and Britain, but would maintain peace with
Russia. On December 6, our intercepts told us, the Japanese
would strike somewhere the very next day. President
496
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Roosevelt," he says "had ample time to broadcast a warning
that might have caused the Japanese to call off the attack." "In
any event," continues the General, "we should not have
permitted 2,500 Americans to die in Hawaii without an
opportunity to fight back."
Who, then, was responsible for the bloody surprise at Pearl
Harbor? A few days after the bombs fell there, President
Roosevelt made a radio speech to the American people in
which he condemned the treachery that propelled us into war,
and called Sunday, December 7, 1941 a day that will live in
infamy. Mr. Roosevelt was never more truly prophetic than he
was when he spoke those words. The infamy of Sunday,
December 7, 1941 becomes increasingly notorious with each
passing year. Ever more and more certainly that calamitous
day is being firmly established in history as the infamous time
when more than 3,000 American soldiers and sailors were
sentenced to sudden and violent death by the calculated and
deliberate dereliction of their own Commander-in-Chief.
Pearl Harbor was but the bloody beginning of what is yet an
endless tale of woe. Down with the sacrificed sailors and
soldiers went the heart and soul of our proud Pacific Fleet. But
with the flotsam of this powerful and humiliating holocaust
came the corrosive curse of Communism to poison the whole
stream of human civilization. The bright light of freedom that
was extinguished by Mr. Roosevelt's dreadful "day of infamy"
may not come on again for a thousand years.
Fixing the responsibility for this terrible catastrophe has
been a delayed and difficult task. In war the truth is always the
first casualty. It was so at Pearl Harbor. The American people
were shocked by this successful sneak attack, and enraged at
the realization that it had dragged them into the foreign war
from which the president had promised "again, and again, and
again" to steer them clear. Popular clamor demanded appro-
priate scapegoats, and the president obligingly and promptly
met the popular demand by nominating for disgrace two men
who, respectively, commanded the United States Army and
Navy forces in Hawaii on that fatal day.
The American people did not know then that the president
and his top military advisors in Washington had been in-
tercepting Japanese secret messages for many months, and
that as General Wedemeyer has said, "These messages had
finally indicated the time, the place, and the character of the
Historical News and Comment
497
Pearl Harbor attack, days in advance of December 7," Neither
did the American people know then that this dreadful and im-
portant information had been deliberately withheld from the
men who were most entitled to know it, namely, the top com-
manders of the United States Army and Navy forces in
Hawaii.
Ten years ago the distinguished newsman George
Morgenstern wrote and published what he called Pearl Har-
bor: The Story of the Secret War. The politicians saw to it that
Morgenstern's early revelation was given the silent treatment
in the press of the country. But, in that book today, you can
trace the long, sadistic persecution that was forced upon two
great military men who were selected as the scapegoats for the
day of infamy.
Namely, Lieutenant Walter C. Short and Rear Admiral Hus-
band E. Kimmel. General Short is now dead, but Admiral Kim-
mel is now living in Connecticut. Three years ago, he publish-
ed his own book about Pearl Harbor, which is authentic,
remarkably restrained and entirely without rancor [Admiral
Kimmers Story -Ed.].
In the magazine section of the Chicago Tribune, he writes an
up-date of his findings concerning the available warning that
was never given to him. Admiral Kimmel happens to be my
life-long personal friend. Last week I went to his home to ob-
tain his direct answers to key questions about the Pearl Harbor
attack. Here is my recorded interview with this distinguished,
long-suffering man, to whom the officers and trustees of his
alma mater, The United States Naval Academy, recently gave
an extended testimonial for the patriotism, loyalty, ability, for-
titude and devotion to duty that he displayed at Pearl Harbor,
before, on and after the 7th day of December, 1941.
CM: Admiral Kimmel, for myself and the radio audience, I
am very greatful for the privilege of this interview. You know,
of course, that you hold the key to one of the great tragic
mysteries in our country's history. What you are doing here to-
day is a continuation of the great patriotic service to which
your whole life has been dedicated.
HEK: Thank you, Dean Manion. In view of our long family
friendship, I'm delighted to give this information to you, and
through you, to the American people.
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THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
CM: To your present knowledge, how many people knew in
advance that the Japanese planned to attack Pearl Harbor on
December 7?
HEK: I believe those who had seen the intercepted and
decoded Japanese messages, including the 14 -part message
received on December 6 and December 7, 1941, knew war
with Japan was inevitable. And the almost certain objective of
the Japanese attack would be the fleet at Pearl Harbor, on
December 7, 1941, at 1 p.m. Washington time.
CM: Who are some of these people and from what source did
they get the information?
HEK: Those who saw the intercepted Japanese messages as
they were received included: the President, Mr. Roosevelt; the
Secretary of State, Mr. Hull; the Secretary of War, Mr. Stim-
son; the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Knox; the Chief of Staff of
the Army, General Marshall; the Chief of Naval Operations,
Admiral Stark; the Chief of War Plans, Army, General Gerow;
the Chief of War Plans, Navy, Admiral Turner; the Chief of
Army Intelligence, General Miles; Chief of Naval Intelligence,
Admiral Worthington. Recorded testimony shows that all of
these, except General Marshall and Admiral Stark were
shown 13 parts of the 14-part message by 9 p.m. December 6,
1941, or shortly thereafter. When Mr. Roosevelt had read the
13 parts, about 9 p.m. December 6, 1941, he remarked: "This
means war." All investigations of the disaster have failed to
disclose where George Marshall spent the evening of
December 6, 1941, or what he did. Admiral Stark, some two
years after he had first been asked, finally produced evidence
that he had attended the theater on that evening, though he
still maintained that he had no independent recollection of
where he spent the evening or what he did during the evening
of December 6, 1941. In 1957, 1 received information, which I
believe to be reliable, that the British subject serving in the
Chinese government as commissioner of education and in-
telligence in China received on November 30, 1941, from his
intelligence sources in Japan, information of the planned at-
tack on Pearl Harbor to be launched on December 7: Where
the Japanese fleet would congregate to launch the planes, the
hour the planes were to be launched, the berths of the U.S.
fleet in Pearl and which ships were to be bombed first. This in-
formation was sent to London in a coded message, on Sunday,
Historical News and Comment
499
November 30, and Monday, December 1, 1941. Whether the
Chinese commissioner's intelligence was transmitted from
London to Washington, I do not know, but it appears highly
probable that it was made available to Mr. Roosevelt. If Mr.
Roosevelt did, in fact, receive the Chinese commissioner's in-
telligence, it was merely a detailed confirmation of the in-
tercepted Japanese messages already available to him.
CM: In your opinion, why were you and General Short not
notified well in advance that the attack was expected?
HEK: My belief is that General Short and I were not given the
information available in Washington and were not informed
of the impending attack because it was feared that action in
Hawaii might deter the Japanese from making the attack. Our
president had repeatedly assured the American people that
the United States would not enter the war unless we were at-
tacked. The Japanese attack on the fleet would put the United
States in the war with the full suppport of the American
public.
CM: Thank you, Admiral Kimmel, for this interview and for
the patriotic persistence with which you have pursued and
corralled the tragic facts about the attack upon Pearl Harbor.
My friends, you now have the authentic postscript on
memorable day of infamy in 1941.
Seventeen years later the United States stands poised once
more on the brink of shooting war. If the fighting must start
again, let us demand the full truth in advance as a condition
precedent to the conflict. Are we again bound by secret com-
mitments which put the interest of other countries ahead of
the interests of the United States? Are our far-flung armed
forces spread around the world for our own defense, or as an
assurance that we will automatically participate in every
brushfire that breaks out any place on earth? The terrible truth
about Pearl Harbor should galvanize our foreign policy with
impenetrable armor of our own national self interest.
At long last, the finally revealed truth has revived righteous
respectability of a policy that put the interest of America first.
(This interview was broadcast under the auspices of The
Manion Forum in Fall, 1958.)
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THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Holocaust Education: Cui Bono?
CARL HOTTELET
The following letter was written to the editor of the
Asbury Park Press on August 20, 1991. As an answer to
the question posed in the above title, it would be difficult to
better.
A 14-line single-column item inserted inconspicuously into
an inside page of your July 7, 1991 issue revealed to
attentive readers that "Florio OKs bill to aid Holocaust
education."
For the last thirty years the newspapers have been
drenching us in "survivor" epics and other horror tales of the
"Holocaust," while film, radio, and television have been
bombarding us incessantly with the most spectacular and
imaginative "Holocaust" stories. One would think, then, that
nothing is less in need of further aid than is "Holocaust
education."
However, Florio put it over. New Jersey's children and
young people, already deficient in reading and writing, having
but a vague knowledge of geography and history, practically
ignorant of logic, mathematics, and the sciences, will have
vital learning time stolen from them so that their minds can be
numbed by "Holocaust education." How will that "education"
prepare them for a productive career, to compete on an equal
basis with Asians and with Europeans?
As a state governor Florio must know, if only from what is
happening in another state — Illinois— that "Holocaust
education" is designed to achieve aims that have nothing to do
with education, but have everything to do with "diseducation."
Three of those aims, summarily stated, are:
to instill guilt-feelings in non-Jews, and to serve as a pretext
for prostituted politicians to vote ever more billions of
dollars for Israel, to bind America to Israel's atrocious
practices, to approve tax exemption for the billions of non-
Historical News and Comment
501
governmental, private contributions to Israel, thereby
increasing the tax burden on the rest of us; to perpetuate
our subservience to Israel and to Zionism— despite their
numerous grave offenses against the United States.
To incite hatred, especially against Germans, though in
proportionately equal degree, as it were, against Baits,
Croatians, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, Ukrainians, and
other Christians, often focussing their vituperation on Pius
XII, despite the asylum accorded by this saintly pope to
uncounted thousands of Jews.
At the same time, while playing down, when it can't be
suppressed entirely, information about Israeli atrocities in
Lebanon, in Palestine, and elsewhere, "Holocaust
education" seeks to generate disproportionate, some would
say excessive, sympathy for Jews, to the exclusion of every
other ethnic group in the country, and on the planet, and at
the expense of peoples who have suffered far worse and in
infinitely greater numbers. In conjunction with above,
"Holocaust education" is calculated to condition Americans
to submit to Jewish hegemony in our society, and to tolerate
the extraordinary privileges Jews have arrogated to
themselves.
"Holocaust education" intends to expunge American (and
other) history from American memory, and to replace it
with a new Jewish scripture. Thus, in Illinois, children are
taught: "The period from 1933 to 1945 is known as the
Holocaust . . ." The headline over a full-page New York
Times Book Review (May 13, 1990) advertisement for the
Encyclopedia of the Holocaust proclaims it to be 'The
Definitive Guide to the Most Important Event of the 20th
Century."
For the "Holocaust educators" there was no Boer war, no
Russo-Japanese War, no World War, no Bolshevist Russian
Revolution, no Sino-Japanese War, no Chinese floods that
drowned millions, no African, Chinese, Indian famines that
killed millions; Stalin's forced starvation of the Ukrainians
isn't worth mentining; there was no World War II with its
additional tens of millions of Russian and German soldier and
civilian dead; of thousands of American soldiers dead, and
many more mutilated since 1917 — all in the twentieth century.
There is only the "Holocaust."
502
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
There were holocausts. Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, Hamburg,
and a hundred other German cities. Nagoya, Osaka, Tokyo,
Yokohama, and a hundred other Japanese cities, until the
ultimate hells of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those were British
and American holocausts. No one tries any longer to deny
them. Nevertheless, it has never occurred to any German, or
to any Japanese, to want to force these searing events into the
minds of young Americans, and that least of all under the
pretense of "combatting hatred," "fostering sensitivity," and
"promoting understanding."
But the "Holocaust"— as we have been led to understand
it— becomes more and more controversial. When the great
Frenchman, Paul Rassinier, began in the the 1950's to ques-
tion the stories that came out of the concentration camps,
demographers, historians, scholars and scientists were moved
to look critically at the assertion "Hitler ordered the extermina-
tion of the Jews" and at the "6,000,000," the "gas chambers," the
"death factories" and the rest. No evidence to support the ex-
istence of any of these was found, and has not been found to
this day.
The brilliant young Italian, Carlo Mattogno, specialist in
contemporary European history, has examined, and exposed,
the successive reptilian twists of the "Exterminationist"
writers through edition after edition of their works. Among
the first Americans to stand publicly against the "Holocaust"
onslaught is Professor Arthur P. Butz, of Northwestern
University. His Hoax of the Twentieth Century is the basic
American text on the "Holocaust."
The Costa Mesa, California-based Institute for Historical
Review inquires into the truth of the "Holocaust." Contribu-
tions to the IHR quarterly Journal are invited, even solicited,
from all sides. Historians and scientists of every continent
have been responding. In the dozen or so years of The Journal's
publication, among the hundreds of contributions that have
been submitted, not one has ventured to substantiate the
"Holocaust."
Little publicity has been given the Institute's standing offer,
and challenge, to debate the question of the "Holocaust." Even
less publicity has been accorded the premature withdrawal of
the very "Exterminationists" who have trumpeted their "accep-
tance" of the challenge.,
No newspaper, and no radio or televisions station, has in-
formed the American people that those who most strenuously,
Historical News and Comment
503
and stridently, want— at public expense— to force the
'Holocaust" dogma on them and their children refuse to
debate its veracity.
Among these curious "refuseniks" are the leaders and
members of the myriad Jewish organizations in the United
States, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the
American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress,
the World Jewish Congress.
Individuals who have made fortunes on the
"Holocaust"— "There's no business like Shoah business"— but
shun debate on it include "Nazi-hunter" Simon Wiesenthal,
hater-in-chief Eli Wiesel, and "Mr. Holocaust" himself, Pro-
fessor Raoul Hilberg. Nor should the swarms of "survivors"
who have profitably published their memoirs be overlooked.
The "Exterminationists," the professionals of the
"Holocaust," when asked to debate their position, respond by
wailing "discrimination," or "persecution," or screaming "anti-
Semite," "neo-Nazi," "fascist"— but they won't debate. Why not?
Do not the American people have the right to hear, in open
debate, all sides of a question that has cost them so much
blood and treasure, and threatens to cost them more still?
At least until this question is resolved fairly and
democratically— not, as is being pressed now, autocratically
and dictatorially— to the satisfaction of the American people,
the intolerable outrage of forcing a special-interest mind-set on
our children and young people should be stopped.
Roosevelt's Secret Pre- War
Plan to Bomb Japan
MARK WEBER
Several months before Japan's December 7, 1941 attack on
Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt secretly
authorized devastating American bombing raids against
Japanese cities. A top secret document de-classified in 1970,
but only made public a few years ago, shows that in July 1941
504
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
Roosevelt and his top military advisers approved a daring plan
to use American pilots and American war planes— deceitfully
flying under the Chinese flag— to bomb Japan's major cities. 1
The bombers would be under the command of Claire
Chennault, a former U.S. Air Corps flyer who had been in the
employ of Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek since
1937. In July 1941 Chennault already headed the "American
Volunteer Group" squadron of U.S. "Flying Tiger" fighter
planes that fought with great success against Japanese forces
in China. Chennault's colorful unit was glorified in American
newspapers and magazines, and in the 1942 Hollywood
propaganda motion picture Flying Tigers, starring John
Wayne.
The young pilots who flew the distinctively "shark-toothed"
B-40 warplanes were ostensibly mercenaries, and the AVG
force had no official connection with the U.S. government. In
reality, though, the squadron was secretly organized and
funded by Washington— in flagrant violation of both
American and international law. Set up without consultation
or consent of Congress, it specifically violated the U.S.
Neutrality Act, the Reserves Act of 1940, and the Selective
Service Act of 1940. Chennault's squadron was also a breach
of Roosevelt's own formal declarations of U.S. neutrality in the
conflict between Japan and China, which had been raging
since 1937.
By aiding China, Roosevelt sought to keep Japanese forces
tied up there. As long as the Japanese were fully occupied in
China, he thought, they would not be a threat to British and
U.S. interests in Asia. If China fell, Britain would have to
divert war ships, troops and materiel badly needed in Europe.
A secret memorandum from the Office of the Chief of Naval
Operations dated January 17, 1940 confirms that almost two
years before the Pearl Harbor attack, the Roosevelt
administration was considering war against the Japanese with
U.S. mercenaries organized in "an efficient guerrilla corps."
The memo also discussed a clandestine U.S. combat air
operation against Japanese forces. Some months later, in May
1941, another memorandum for Roosevelt from Admiral
Thomas C. Hart, Commander of the U.S. Asiatic fleet, began:
"The concept of a war with Japan is believed to be sound," and
went on to discuss how Japan could be attacked by American-
piloted bombers. 2
Historical News and Comment
505
To put such ideas into effect, Chennault pushed for the
formation of a task force of American-piloted bombers under
his command that would raid Japan itself. "If the men and
equipment were of good quality, such a force could cripple the
Japanese war effort," he wrote. "A small number of long-range
bombers carrying incendiary bombs could quickly reduce
Japan's paper-and-matchwood cities to heaps of smoking
ashes."
Chennault's proposal quickly received the enthusiastic
support of China's ambassador in Washington, T. V. Soong
(multi-millionaire banker brother-in-law of Chinese
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek), British ambassador Lord
Lothian, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and FDR's
Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau.
The idea to bomb Japan was first formally presented to
Roosevelt on December 19, 1940. As Dr. Duane Schultz relates
in his 1987 study, The Maverick War, FDR's response was to
exclaim 'Wonderful!," and to immediately instruct his
Secretaries of State, Treasury, War and Navy to begin working
out the details of a battle plan. 3
Not everyone was so enthusiastic, though. Secretary of War
Henry Stimson and Army Chief of Staff General George
Marshall expressed misgivings. Marshall cautioned that
having American pilots bomb Japan using American planes
with Chinese markings was a trick that would not really fool
anybody, but would simply plunge the United States into a
war with Japan at a time when the U.S. was still woefully
unprepared.
As a result of such misgivings, the plan was temporarily
shelved. A few months later, though, a somewhat modified
version was revived as 'Joint Army-Navy Board Paper No.
355." 4
As finally laid out in JB 355, an air strike force of 500
Lockheed Hudson bombers was to be organized as The
Second American Volunteer Group" under Chennault's com-
mand. Its mission would be the "pre-emptive" bombing of
Japan. The strategic objective of JB 355 was the "destruction of
Japanese factories in order to cripple munitions and essential
articles for maintenance of economic structure in Japan."
From bases about 1,300 miles away in eastern China, the
American bombers would strike Japan's industrial centers, in-
cluding Osaka, Nagasaki, Yokohama and Tokyo. (These air
506
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
WAR AND NAVY DEPARTMENTS SECRET
WASHINGTON
JUL 1 8 1941
The President;
Tho White House.
Deer ttr. President!
At the request of Mr. Leuchlln Currie, Administrative
Assi stent to The President, The Joint Board has aide *ecomme>-
detions for furnishing aircraft to the Chinese Government under
the Lend- Lease Act. These recommendations ere contained in the
Joint ilenninc Coaaittee report of July 9. 19U, J.B. Wo. 355
(Sortel (#1), which The Joint Board approved, and which ie
transmitted herewith for your consideration.
In connection with this setter, may we point out that
the accomplishment of The Joint Board* e proposals to furnish
aircraft equipment to China in accordance with Mr. Currie 1 s
8hort Tern Requlremento for China, requiree the collaboration
of Greut Britain in diverelone of allocations already made to
them; however, it le our belief that the suggested diversions
present no in surmountable difficulty nor occasion any grant
hamlicap.
?We have approved this report and in forwarding it.
to you, recommend your approval,
7ff^ ^ Secretary of the Navy.
Cover letter of official U.S. "Joint Army-Navy Board No. 355" paper
authorizing American bombing raids against Japan. The top secret docu-
ment is signed by the Secretaries of War and Navy, and bears Franklin
Roosevelt's initials of authorization and a handwritten date, July 23, 1941
— more than four months before the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor.
strikes would have unavoidably claimed the lives of many
civilians. By contrast, the Japanese planes that attacked Pearl
Harbor carefully avoided civilian targets.)
U.S. funds for the operation were to be provided as part of a
general loan to China and channeled through a dummy cor-
poration. The American military personnel involved were
given deceptive passports. (Chennault's gave his occupation as
"farmer," and cited him as an "advisor to the Central Bank of
China.")
Secret plan JB 355 was approved by the Secretary of War,
the Secretary of the Navy, and— on July 23, 1941— by Presi-
dent Franklin Roosevelt.
Historical News and Comment
507
No one played a more important role in promoting and
organizing this plan than Lauchlin Bernard Currie, a close
Roosevelt White House adviser. Now 89 years old and living
in South America, he provided details of his role in the secret
operation, and of Roosevelt's support for it, in a November
1991 television interview. 5 A major motive behind Currie's
eagerness to get the U.S. into war with Japan, it seems, was his
strongly pro-Soviet sympathies. There is even tantalizing but
still inconclusive evidence to suggest that Currie was a Soviet
agent. 6
When Roosevelt approved plan JB 355, Currie sent a secret
cable to Chennault: "I am very happy to be able to report that
today the President directed that 66 bombers be made
available to China [sic] this year, with 24 to be delivered
immediately."
Although it received approval from numerous high-level
officials, the plan was not well conceived. In the view of Yale
University history professor Gaddis Smith, the Lockheed Hud-
son bombers that were to carry out the raids would have been
easily shot down by Japan's first-rate fighter planes. 7
Two days after approving JB 355, Roosevelt declared a
crippling trade embargo against Japan, an act of economic
strangulation that he knew full well would virtually assure
war. (At that time, about 90 percent of Japan's oil and iron
came from the United States.) And having broken Japanese
codes, British and American officials learned in early July of
Japan's sure intentions in the Pacific: war with the U.S. was
now inevitable. 8
Understandably viewing Roosevelt's campaign as a mortal
threat to their country's very existence as a modern industrial
nation, Japan's leaders resolved to strike a first blow. They
reasoned that by destroying the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii in
one decisive surprise attack, they would remove the one great
obstacle to forging a self sufficient Japanese empire in eastern
Asia.
History thus intervened to thwart Roosevelt's plan to bomb
Japan. Before JB 355 Japan could be put into effect, and before
Japan felt the full impact of FDR's trade embargo, the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor— and Roosevelt had the open war with
Japan that he had anticipated. In effect, Japan beat America to
the punch.
On December 11, 1941, four days after the Pearl Harbor
debacle, all further action on the JB 355 plan was suspended,
508
THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW
and the bomber pilots who had been recruited were quickly
incorporated into the regular U.S. armed forces.
Franklin Roosevelt branded December 7, 1941, as "a date
which will live in Infamy." And although many millions of
Americans still regard Japan's "sneak attack" as the ultimate
act of international deceit and treachery, it was hardly unique.
In 1801, Britain's Lord Nelson destroyed Denmark's fleet in
a surprise attack on Copenhagen. In May 1846, the U.S. Army
invaded Mexican territory before Congress got around to
declaring that a state of war existed with Mexico. Far from
feeling ashamed about it, Americans later elected as President
the commander who lead the expedition, Zachary Taylor. In
June 1967, Israel carried out a surprise attack against Egypt,
and was widely praised in the U.S. for its adroit skill in
destroying almost the entire Egyptian air force while it was
still on the ground.
Just about every major power has resorted to surprise attack
at one time or another, according to a study by British army
officer and historian Sir Frederick Maurice. Between 1700
and 1870, he calculated, France carried out 36 surprise at-
tacks, Britian 30, Austria twelve, Russia seven, Prussia seven,
and the United States at least five. 9
The long-suppressed story of FDR's plan to bomb Japan cer-
tainly deserves to be better known. As sensational as it is,
though, it is only one chapter of the larger— and still largely
unknown— story of Roosevelt's extensive and illegal campaign
to bring a supposedly neutral United States into the Second
World War. 10 Indeed even before the outbreak of war in
Europe in September 1939, Roosevelt was secretly doing
everything in his power to incite conflict there. 11
In the months before the Pearl Harbor attack, the American
president accelerated his illegal campaign. For example, after
Axis forces launched the fateful June 22, 1941, "Barbarossa" at-
tack against Soviet Russia, he promptly began sending
American aid to Stalin. On July 25, 1941, Roosevelt froze
Japanese assets of $130 million in the United States, thus en-
ding trade relations. He closed the American-run Panama
Canal to Japanese shipping. In June and July 1941, he dispat-
ched U.S. troops to occupy Greenland and Iceland. And by
September-October 1941, U.S. warships were actively engag-
ing German U-boats in the Atlantic, in flagrant violation of
U.S. and international law. 12
Historical News and Comment
509
From a larger historical perspective, the magnitude of
Roosevelt's undercover military operations against Japan and
Germany, at a time when the U.S. was ostensibly neutral,
dwarfs other, much ballyhooed, clandestine U.S. military
operations in later years, such as President Reagan's help to
the Nicaraguan "Contra" fighters, or the infamous Iran-Contra
operation.
Notes
1. Much of the information for this essay is derived from: Don McLean,
'Tigers of a Different Stripe: FDR's Secret Plan to Torch Japan Before
Pearl Harbor," Soldier of Fortune, January 1989, pp. 66-93.; Transcript,
ABC television "20/20" broadcast, Friday, Nov. 22, 1991 (No. 1149).
2. D. McLean, Soldier of Fortune, Jan. 1989, pp. 67-68.
3. Dr. Duane Schultz, The Maverick War: Chennault and the Flying
Tigers. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987.
4. Joint Army-Navy Board Paper 355, ("Aircraft Requirements of the
Chinese Government"), Serial 691, National Archives, Washington,
DC.
5. Transcript, ABC television "20/20" broadcast, Nov. 22, 1991.
6. D. McLean, Soldier of Fortune, Jan. 1989, pp. 70-71.
7. Transcript, "20/20" broadcast, Nov. 22, 1991.
8. James Rushbridger and Eric Nave, Betrayal at Pearl Harbor (1991);
John Toland, Infamy (1982); John Costello, The Pacific War (1981);
Percy L. Greaves, Jr., "Three 'Day of Infamy' Assessment," Journal of
Historical Review, Fall 1982, pp. 319-340.
9. William H. Honan, "Remember Pearl Harbor," Los AngeJes Times,
Nov. 6, 1991.
10. For example, the ABC television "20/20" broadcast of Nov. 22, 1991,
which gave sensational treatment to the JB 355 bombing plan, failed to
put the story in the larger context of FDR's ongoing campaign to bring
the U.S. into war.; On FDR's campaign to bring America into war, see:
George Morgenstern, Pearl Harbor: The Secret War (1947 and 1991);
Charles A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War 1941
(1948); William H. Chamberlin, America's Second Crusade (1952 and
1962); Charles C. Tansill, Back Door to War (1952); Harry Elmer
Barnes, Barnes Against the Blackout (1991).
11. Mark Weber, "President Roosevelt's Campaign to Incite War in
Europe," Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1983, pp. 135-172.
12. For a more detailed listing of such acts, see: George Morgenstern,
Pearl Harbor: The Secret War, pp. 87-88; "Hitler's Declaration of War
Against the United States," Journal of Historical Review, Winter
1988-89, pp. 406-410.
About the Contributors
CARL HOTTELET, a retired businessman, was born in New
York City. He was graduated from Fordham University and is
a veteran of the Second World War. Mr. Hottelet, who has
traveled widely, is the translator, from several different
languages, of a number of articles and books published by
IHR, the latest of which is Flashpoint -Kristallnacht 1938 by
Ingrid Weckert.
CHARLES LUTTON, Ph.D., is a specialist in diplomatic and
military history. A previous contributor to the JHR, he resides
outside of Seattle.
DEAN CLARENCE MANION, formerly of the University of
Notre Dame Law School, was an author, lecturer, and
respected constitutional lawyer who had written extensively
on important historical and political issues.
ANDREAS WESSERLE was born in Prague, Bohemia, and
grew up in Bavaria. He is the holder of four academic degrees,
with distinction, in the fields of political science and political
sociology. Dr. Wesserle has taught at several American col-
leges and universities, and has published many articles on
politics in American and European journals.
JACK WIKOFF is a writer and researcher living in central
New York State, where he publishes a Revisionist newsletter
(Remarks, P.O. Box 234, Aurora, NY 13026).
NEW FRO M THE INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW
pe» wmmi
"SWZZ tof aZwwf December 7> 1941
Pearl Harbor attack, despite a formidable
volume of subsequent writing by many
others on the subject. "
— James J. Martin
With all the elements at hand, the reader has the ingredients of a
mystery. There are victims — 3,000 of them in the Pearl Harbor
attack. There are a variety of clues ... a multitude of false leads
. . . numerous possible motives. Innumerable obstructions are put in
the way of the discovery of truth. Many of the characters betray
guilty knowledge.
From the Foreword to Pearl Harbor— The Story of the Secret War
Did Morgenstern Unravel
the Mystery of Pearl Harbor?
Experts Comment:
Brilliant and impressive
— Harry Elmer Barnes
A permanent contribution to the quest
for an understanding of the tragedy
— Charles A. Beard
Discloses with great ability the lessons
of secret diplomacy and national
betrayal — Charles C. Tansill
Mr. Morgenstern is to be
congratulated on marshalling the
available facts of this tragedy in such
a manner as to make it clear to every
reader where the responsibility lies
— Adm. H.E. Yarnell
ISBN 0-939484-38-2
Softcover • 425 pp • $14.95
From Institute for Historical Review
ARL
tttKDGR
The Story ot
The Secret War
George
Morgenstern
V JAMES J MARTIN
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Understanding 9/11